


Freki the Wolf

by Berchtwald



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Abduction, Asgard, BDSM, Genderbending, Humiliation, M/M, Magic, Master/Pet, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Past Torture, Slavery, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-18 17:35:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 16
Words: 34,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2356757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berchtwald/pseuds/Berchtwald
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Thor 2, with minimal regard to Iron Man 3 (the start of it).</p>
<p>Tony wakes up from a bender he doesn't remember in a place he wasn't expecting to end up... Asgard, in all its peaceful glory.  Loki is free, alive, and sitting on the throne, but only Tony can see him for what he is, and only Loki can see Tony for anything but one of Odin's pets.  Not even Tony can always remember who he really is.</p>
<p>While struggling with Loki's chaotic nature and captivity on an alien world, Tony also begins working to harness a tool he never expected to have at his disposal.  But is it the way back to Earth?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Photomanip by Kadje83](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2466398)

His skull pounded, like he hadn’t felt in… not for a few months.  Tony hadn’t had a reason to get that drunk for a little while, he didn’t think he had the night before, but it was all a blank.  “God,” he groaned, pulling his forearm over his eyes and rubbing at his skull in a vain attempt to relieve the hangover.

Tony took a deep breath and struggled to sit up and crack his eyes, his hand leaving his head to grasp at something unexpected hanging around his neck.  A chain on a collar, clinking as he moved.   

"What kind of kinky..?" 

The room didn’t answer any questions, lush and bright, too bright for him to see right away; not particularly revealing once he could.  The light seemed to cut into his throbbing eyes, but soon he could make out elaborate furniture and wide, open windows without glass but intricately carved lattice shutters that cast delicate patterns over the stone walls appointed with gold and over the thickly carpeted floors.  Tony was sprawled out on some sort of fur rug, the chain bolted to the floor, _chained_ in front of a canopied bed far too ostentatious even for him; it could fit an orgy.  Through an archway, in the other room he could see a fountain and vines crawling up columns flanking a balcony. 

It was all so _big_ , so grand he couldn’t imagine where he was.  Beyond anything he'd seen in any hotel’s most expensive suite in Vegas or Dubai, anything he’d ever seen in anything short of a palace.  But it was nearly winter, everywhere but south of the border. And the patterns began to clear in his vision as Norse. 

Groaning again, he closed his eyes to block out some of the needles of that golden sun stabbing in, trying to focus as his fingers traveled over the chain, up to the hard collar, leather and metal.  No lock he could find, but the buckle wouldn’t come undone, the chain wouldn’t come unclipped. 

Was he still drunk? 

Tony crawled forward over the rug, squinting again as he pulled at the chain, trying to free it from the floor.  But the overly-decorated ring was securely fastened down, it _seemed_ like it should be a simple thing to unclip it, but nothing came of it.  His fingers were slowed by his groggy haze, but not that fumbling.  He’d done far, far more complex tasks in bad shape.  He grumbled in frustration, then looked up again and yelled. 

“Hey!  Hello!  Is someone there?” he called, but there was no answer.  Just some birds squawking once as they flew past the window.  Big birds… what kind was _that?_  Gone too quickly too tell, but they seemed as out of place as anything.  Or _he_ was the thing out of place. 

He kept yelling as long as his head could bear it, then gave up.  Sitting back with a grunt of defeat, Tony ran his fingers through his hair and tried to _think._ It was difficult to imagine what Thor might have to do with this, or any of the Asgardians, this just wasn't their _style._ The recently deceased aside, they didn't seem to want anything to do with Earth or humans, from anything Thor had ever said. 'Petty mortals' just weren't that interesting. It had to be a joke, he just had to wait and someone would walk in with coffee and a key in exchange for jabs at Tony's dignity. 

The moment was interrupted by footsteps, _finally_ , and he had the presence of mind to pull his leg up and cover _himself_ for whoever was there. 

With a mighty groan and creak, the gold doors beyond the archway opened, admitting a figure he hadn’t seen before.  An older man, with gray hair spilling down his shoulders, an uncomfortable-looking brass eye patch, armor like… Thor.  Who..? 

“I could hear your barking down the hall, we _will_ have to fix that,” the irritatingly familiar figure said, smirking down at him. 

Tony bristled and squared his shoulders, watched at the man waved a hand at the door as he shut it, but he wasn’t sure what that meant, even if it was a very clearly intentional gesture. 

“Listen, I don’t know what kind of party you were throwing here last night… if you were,” Tony said, “but I could use a cab, some aspirin, maybe hair of the dog… out of this chain,” he flippantly responded, holding up the offending length. 

“Oh, Tony Stark,” the man pronounced, triumphantly, if Tony didn’t miss his guess.  Grinning down at the man on the floor in a way Tony didn’t like, either. 

It was even more of a shock than waking up here, when the man’s regal countenance evaporated, changing in a glow of light to a very familiar face.  A whole different kind of superior bearing.   _Loki,_ lording over him in green and gold.  He laughed at Tony’s surprise and took the mantle off his shoulders, tossing it onto a plush chair. 

Tony just didn't have any good witty one-liners for _that_ reveal. 

“I’m so glad you’re so willingly self-plying with drink and the opportunity to preen,” Loki said, shaking his head with a smirk. 

“What do you want, Loki, what is this?  Popping back from the dead again to gloat, that’s a lot of trouble, even for such a fabulous audience as myself,” Tony said, glibly as he could manage, trying to shake off the raging ache pounding mercilessly at his skull.  “How much _did_ I drink?” 

Loki just chuckled some more, knelt down and snatched the chain away from him, to pull him closer.  Tony started, tried to pull back and grab at the gauntleted forearm, but Loki’s grip was unwilling to be shaken, too strong to fight off as he held the chain and grasped Tony’s poor head with surprising gentleness. 

“I could only take one of you without arousing suspicion,” Loki said quietly, stroking his head with more than just fingers.  “One of your… what did you call yourselves?  Avengers?” he chuckled, as if it were a joke.  As if they hadn’t defeated an alien army as a handful of humans against the unimaginable. 

Tony could feel _something_ , some tingling power moving out of them and into his skull and tried to struggle harder, remembering the blue-eyed thralls turning on their own.  But he didn’t feel it sinking into his mind, not like that, but a cooling wave that washed away the pain, cleared out the fog of the hangover, even if it didn’t add anything to his memory of the night before.  He took in a hitching breath and looked up warily at the towering figure. 

“You were so very easy to locate, Stark, and I didn’t even have to bother with creating some reason you might disappear.  Will anybody even be surprised you’ve gone?” 

“I have lots of big name friends that’ll be real anxious about that,” Tony countered.  “Like your brother?  Or, oh, I don’t know, _myself._  SHIELD?  Captain America? Who isn't going to be looking for me, that's the better question, with the follow-up of how fast are they going to get here and defenestrate your ass.” 

Loki laughed again, then twisted the chain once around his hand, making Tony sit up higher.  “I _hardly_ think so,” he said. 

“Really, what is this?” he asked, exasperated, laying out his hand in frustration more than any compliance. 

“You said it yourself.  An audience, while I sit on my so-called father’s throne, lengthen my rule until I can show my true face without fear.” 

“Odin… you’re pretending to be your dad?  Right under everyone's nose?” 

“You are the sharp one, aren’t you.” 

“Part of my charm,” Tony grunted, tried to twist out of Loki’s grip again only to have a fist in his hair.  He grunted again, wincing and trying not to look into the gloating eyes, but there was nowhere else to look.  And he didn’t like the confidence he saw there, not the arrogance of before, but the assurance of someone that already won.  And knew it. 

_Fear_ began sinking in, as he felt completely toyed with; Tony jerked his shoulder back, but Loki’s hand ran down his face, his exposed neck, and over his chest.  Loki looked down at the glowing arc reactor in Tony’s chest, rising and falling with faster, deeper breaths.  Fingers delicately touched it as Tony clung vainly to his wrist, pushing without stopping the exploration at all. 

“You never did properly explain what this is, Stark,” Loki said, voice dripping with idle curiosity. 

The last thing Tony wanted to do was answer him, but Loki kept touching, fingers moving until he _turned_  the grip and pulled it out of his chest.  Now fear was racing through him wildly, remembering the helplessness of having it stolen from him once before, while he was paralyzed, unable to stop the choking of his blood, the metal shards stabbing in his veins. 

“Could it be you love your technology so dearly as to seat its power in your own body?” Loki asked, pulling it out, the wires going taut as he examined it.  Taut and strained as Tony’s whole body felt, the more the connection was tested. 

“It’s my heart,” Tony choked.  “It keeps me alive, put it back,” he said with a frantic touch he was loathe to hear from his own mouth.  “If you want me breathing I need it.” 

“Why?” Loki asked softly, looking back into Tony’s eyes.  Seeming to like what he saw, which made Tony’s stomach turn.  “Why do you have a mechanical heart, Tony Stark?” 

Tony could feel the wire pulling, threatening to disconnect from the magnet, he swore he could feel the shards moving already.  He didn’t want to answer him, he knew he shouldn’t be so easily swayed, Loki wouldn’t go through all this trouble just to kill him on a whim.  But that relentless anxiety wouldn’t go away, made his fingers numb and his hands shake, helplessly struggling to keep clinging to him.  He hated his traitorous fingers for being _only human_ just then. 

“One of my weapons exploded in my face, there are pieces still inside me.  Pull it out and they cut off my bloodflow, I kick it, you’re out of an audience,” Tony explained… pleaded?  It sounded too much like begging to his own ears, but he couldn’t stop it.  Not like this, with his insides pulled out.  He believed Loki, that nobody knew where he was, he might die here and leave everyone he cared about wondering where he’d stumbled off to. 

“I have read about you,” Loki said.  “I know you’ve been in captivity before, put in your place before ruthless masters.  Was that where you had your injury?”  He scoffed with derision and laughed again.  Didn’t seem to want or need an answer.  “I saw the fear in your eyes, even as you preached to me about how I would find no victory, the fear that you would live under the boot heels of your betters again.  I have my throne now, Stark.  I see your fear again.” 

There was no denying that just yet, not while Tony was fighting so hard to get a hold of himself. 

“Are you just going to hide me in your closet?” he spat. 

“Oh no.  I don’t need to hide you at all,” Loki said with a grin.  He was clearly reveling in the confusion that statement brought, pushing the arc reactor back into place. 

Tony tried not to be visibly relieved, but he was.  Even knowing he might be facing far worse than the not-so quick and painful death it would bring to yank it free. 

There was a knock at the door, and Loki chuckled, brief and self-satisfied.  “Good timing.  Just what I need to demonstrate your place now.” 

Loki let go of Tony, finally, and the chain, but the relief was short-lived; he just picked it up where it was attached at the floor and held it like a leash, dragging Tony over to the door, kicking and grunting and fighting every step of the way.  Loki didn’t seem to mind, just kept pulling him along until he opened the door… then Tony stopped struggling, went still and clung to the chain. 

It was Thor, smiling broadly in his sunny way, at Loki, then down at Tony, as if nothing at all was wrong. 

“Thor!  Thor, buddy, am I glad to see you,” Tony gushed, tugging at the chain again.  “Your _lunatic_ brother snatched me…” 

“He is a talkative beast,” Thor chuckled, and… patted Tony’s hair, making him go rigid with utter surprise as the big hand just stroked down his neck.  “I could hear him earlier, you are lucky there is privacy to your rooms, father.  I should not have been concerned he might be too much for you.” 

Tony’s jaw hung slack, again struck speechless as he stared up at his friend.  Who he _thought_ was his friend, if not just teammate, and that was worth something, that had to… and he put together the pieces, slowly, not hearing as they kept talking amongst themselves, ignoring him for a moment.  They weren’t speaking English, but he somehow understood everything, however it was a revelation he couldn’t dwell on just yet.  He realized, perhaps, Thor had never spoken English. 

Thor didn’t see Loki when he looked at him; he saw Odin.  And he didn’t see Tony, either.  Tony looked at his own hand, trying to see the illusion for himself, but he didn’t understand. 

“I’ve decided to name him Freki,” Loki said, looking back at Tony, making his voice come back into clarity again.  Tony looked up at him, still stunned, while the trickster took over stroking Tony’s hair like a well-behaved pet. 

“Strange name for a wolf!” Thor declared.  “Is he as the name might imply, father?  Covetous?” 

“Of everything he does not have.  I believe he might have been, before I subdued him.  He may still need much subduing, I fear.”


	2. Chapter 2

Tony had expected some kind of simple, run-of-the mill kind of torture from Loki, but he knew he should have known better. The trickster, the liar, the Norse god of twisted truths that were _hurting_ and brought inevitable ruin with more subtly than that. Tony had done research of his own, as he did, as much as the internet had to give whenever a subject came up, and Loki sure as _heck_ had. He had no doubt that something more base and painful would come sooner or later, but just then, all Loki did was drag him kicking and screaming through the opulence of his palace, laughing at his protests, laughing with the guards at his protests, silently showing off everything that was _his_ now, part of Loki’s throne.

A lavish palace beyond Tony’s imagining. It was difficult to picture that even Thor could come from here, from such grandeur and ancient splendor. 

And of course _he_ went right there, to the wide gold chair, flanked by guards and the elaborate engraved backdrop, sitting high in the throne with a secret smile just for Tony when he wasn’t busy holding court. Just for what everyone else saw as a _dog_ , a great brown wolf at his feet, whining and growling and protesting like any newly captured wild animal would. Tony was sure of that, from everything they said, from everything he thought about when he sat there sullenly. Advice was offered, and brave hands to touch him if they were brave enough to get that close to their king in the first place, feeling only fur and a long wolf’s snout, not hearing or seeing anything of the man. Not looking for anything more. Muzzle if he bit, tightened collar if he didn’t stop barking, more time running free, those were their suggestions. _That_ all made Tony laugh, uncertain of how it sounded to the guards hovering over him. As if those were the things Loki could do to make him change, as if those were real threats. 

He could understand what they said, but not about, not all the time; they talked about places and problems he’d never conceived of before, subjects going right over his head. 

It was all so shocking that he didn’t know quite how to respond, at first; beyond the cursing and the yelling, for all the good _that_ did, which was none at all. There was no Loki dragging around a naked Iron Man, not to anybody but the two of them; it was a respected elder, a king, a god with a well-earned pet from the wilderness. 

He sat beside Loki’s throne in a different kind of fog, one of new uncertainty. Knowing how to get back and forth at all was just academic, things he’d gathered from Thor’s problems about a rainbow bridge and veils between worlds on the great tree Yggdrasil. _Magic._ Tony was an _engineer_ , a scientist, he couldn’t grasp that kind of abstract and new set of laws and hadn’t really tried. 

When Tony did settle on the top step to the throne, he sat with his legs in front of him, leaning on his knees. He couldn’t ask Loki how far the illusion went, of course; The Liar would lie if he bothered with an answer at all. The simplest way of attempting to foil it seemed to be to just do something that required opposable thumbs and intelligence, write something, carve a mathematical equation, pick up a complex tool and use it. 

Loki was smart, but he was arrogant to a fault. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, Tony knew he would have to wait for his opportunity. Hopefully not long. 

“Your schemes will come to nothing,” Loki murmured, smirking down when Tony looked up at him. 

“I’m just thinking about pants,” Tony replied. At least Loki wasn’t a mind reader, for what good that did him. “What am I supposed to do to get that, roll over? Fetch?” 

Loki looked up at his guards, then raised his voice to address them. 

“I would be alone a while,” he said. 

They turned and nodded, began walking down the massive room; it took a moment for them to reach the end, to incredibly tall doors that opened to briefly show Tony a view that he could hardly believe. Outside the door stretched a gleaming crystal bridge through towering gold structures, beyond it mountains, overhead a sky both stars and nebulae and at the same time dotted with clouds in a blue horizon, illuminated by gold sunshine. He stared at its magnificence until the doors swung shut again. 

Loki stood then, forcing Tony to his feet and down the steps. With a smirk, Loki gave more slack on the chain. 

“Kneel before me and allow me to consider what I might graciously allow,” Loki said. 

“Oh you _wish._ ” 

“It is what _you_ wish, pet.” Loki took a breath to keep talking, but Tony interrupted. 

“ _Don’t_ you start calling me that. You might have everybody fooled right now, but this little song and dance of yours isn’t going to last,” Tony insisted, pointing an accusatory finger at his captor, glaring burning hatred as if it might really light the smarmy bastard on fire. 

Loki backhanded him so fast he barely saw it coming So hard he tasted blood in his mouth and stumbled back, but Loki’s grip on him didn’t let him go anywhere. He simply yanked him back up on his feet only to give the slack again. 

“You are in no position to make demands, nor show me such disrespect,” Loki spat. “If you want something, anything from me, you _will_ show deference.” 

Tony considered spitting blood on Loki’s elaborate get-up, but it probably wouldn’t do any good; probably could be magically cleaned faster than Loki could slap him again. He licked the blood off his lip and swallowed it, not wincing at the sting of the cut in his cheek. Not much liking the look on Loki’s face as he watched him do it. 

“And if I don’t?” 

“No doubt hunger and discomfort would change your mind.” 

Tony had forgotten about being hungry, too busy to realize it in the first place, but the reminder made his stomach rumble. Much to his chagrin. “I think I like myself too much for a lot of grovelling.” 

“I know you love yourself too much to let yourself simply perish out of pride.” 

Tony made a face and crossed his arms; after all, well, he had him there. Took one to know one. 

“If you wanted someone to bow down, you should have picked someone else,” Tony scoffed. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? You _don’t_ get what you want.” 

Snarling impatiently, Loki let go of the chain, raised his hand… and Tony found his own hands yanked up over his head, his whole body flying back until it slammed into a massive gold pillar. The blow knocked the wind out of him, but he had it back by the time Loki strode over to him, Tony’s feet inches off the reflectively polished ground, wrists pinned up against the cool stone by some invisible force. _Magic._

“Isn’t someone going to think it’s a little off, talking to your dog and throwing it around like this?” Tony wheezed, toes trying vainly to find purchase on the just-out-of-reach floor. 

“They will see nothing out of the ordinary if we are interrupted. Illusions are my greatest strength, enough to fool any that might intrude. Nothing you say or do, nothing you goad me into doing, will betray who you are.” 

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Tony retorted, chin up defiantly. 

“And you will see the futility of your stubbornness.” Loki smiled and held out his hand, a black leather strap glowing into existence in his hand. “How did your former masters bring you to heel?” 

This had to be when the pain was going to start. Tony clutched his hands into fists and sneered. 

“They _didn’t_ ,” he growled. “I killed them all. Every. Last. One.” 

That wasn’t the whole truth, of course, and the Master Liar just smirked and raised the strap, bringing it down on Tony’s torso. 

The sharp, slapping sound echoed through the expansive space, with Tony’s grunts escaping through gritted teeth. It fell again, and again, leaving red welts behind, making him twist and kick against the pillar, trying to kick at Loki. The strap landed on his feet when he got anywhere close, hurting even _more_. The pain all ran together, as distinct as each sharp blow was, the hit, the blossom of feeling biting into his belly like a grenade chucked into him, napalm that spread and burned before it faded and came again. 

Tony had been imprisoned before, never ruthlessly beaten like this, faced with a pain that kept coming, and coming, until time blurred and every moment was just _the lash_ again, a breath, a scream, the lash, the _pain_. Living there in the torture. 

Loki didn’t give any sign of stopping, not even slowing down, just finding new spaces of untouched skin to give angry raised marks to. 

Time began to blur, he began living from blow to blow. The sound of the leather moving through the air, the strike, the radiating, burning sting, over and over. Grunts of pain became screams and he felt a hot, wet tear squeeze out of his eye. 

“Stop!” Tony yelled, _begged_. Did he say “please?” He hoped he didn’t, but he was afraid he _did_ let it slip past wet and desperate lips. His belly flopped over at the idea he’d _whimpered_ , but he was so terribly sure he had. 

To his surprise, Loki did relent. He put the strap down, reached up with his other hand to touch the heat off Tony’s marked ribs as they moved with panting. 

“What did they do, Stark?” Loki asked again. 

_Hell_ but he didn’t want to answer. Not just out of pride, knowing he would be handing Loki another weapon to use, and when he opened his eyes to really look at Loki again, it only confirmed it, seeing the haughty victory on his face. 

“Must I continue?” Loki asked, an amused note in his voice. 

Tony found a second wind and set his jaw; it made Loki laugh and slap his stomach, before he began beating him again. 

This time it was _louder_. He could swear Loki was hitting him harder now, the evil , twisted, heartless, soulless, wicked bastard just _loving_ every moment of it as he laughed and swung at Tony’s defenseless body. His flesh just twisted and writhed between uncaring stone and vicious blows, until he wondered what secrets he _could_ tell to make it all stop. 

Over and over and Tony kept screaming unintelligible when his teeth weren’t painfully set together, grinding hard in defiance. Until he found a word to cry out and make it stop again. 

“Water!” he roughly relented, his voice trembling and weak, and ears surprised himself with a dry, harsh sob in his throat. He swallowed and cringed even as Loki mercifully stopped again. 

“Water?” Loki repeated back, curious. 

Tony shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the pillar. Rigid, cold, and unfeeling in all its massive gilded glory. 

“They used water,” he said, voice thick with his screaming. His voice was uncertain, too, but it was the truth, just as it was wavering with desperation and shame, just wanting this moment to _end_. “They held me down and shoved my head under and half-drowned me over and over until I said I’d build them a missile they wanted, are you _happy?_ ” 

Loki didn’t answer, didn’t make any noise at all, until Tony relented and looked down at him. He was still smirking, the strap gone, just standing there admiring Tony’s discomfort. 

“Amazing, how cruel your people will be to one another for petty personal gain.” 

“That’s rich, coming from _you_.” 

That made Loki frown; which made Tony tense up again. But no more blows came; instead, he found himself limply falling to the floor, just barely catching himself from knocking his skull against the polished marble. If that’s what it was. He let loose a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. 

Loki stood over him, looking ready to retort, or kick him, or _something_ , but seemed to change his mind and simply pick up the chain again. Or he brought it back into existence to hold, Tony wasn’t certain. 

There was an uncomfortably long silence, of Tony looking back up at him, collecting his shreds of dignity. Loki’s eyes were hard and spiteful then, like dark glass marbles with a vicious fire burning behind them. 

“Perhaps I would see how compliant you truly are, shoved in a basin.” 

Tony’s guts twisted around a spike of anxiety, in spite of himself. No matter how much he drank, how much he distracted himself, it could all come back so clearly in his mind; the cold taste of the dirty, gritty water in his mouth and running down his nose, the panic and the burn of waiting for another breath. The fear it would never come, no matter how many times he told himself he was too valuable to be snuffed out and thrown away. 

Loki won the staring contest. Tony’s eyes fell to the floor, to his unclear reflection in the dark surface, and he knew what the towering figure wanted. He pulled himself up and knelt, sitting reluctantly on his heels, hands clenched in his lap. 

“Now that’s a good boy,” Loki purred, _taunted_ , and reached forward to gently stroke Tony’s head, petting his hair in triumph. “Good boy,” he repeated, just twisting the knife of shame harder.


	3. Chapter 3

Loki seemed to decide that Tony had earned a pair of pants, after all; almost. Somewhere between the throne room and Odin’s rooms deeper in the palace, he found himself walking in soft leather boots instead of barefoot, a matching brown cross between a leather skirt and a loincloth with a thick metal belt. A piece matching the local fashion sense for all that it would be seen, but at least it mercifully came with underwear. Not exactly Earth-standard, but he was quickly lowering his standards about a thing or two.

And knee pads. Tony bit his tongue against making a remark about them, he’d rather have a ridiculous Conan the barbarian the harem boy get-up than nothing but a collar and his arc reactor’s glow. 

He tried not to think about the implications of being sexualized by the only person that could see him for who he was. Tony told himself it was just about demeaning him in general, and being an expert at lying to himself, it genuinely eased his mind. It couldn’t be possible that revealing clothing was worse than none at all-- no no, that was _silly._

Back in the room, he was returned to the fur rug. Then Loki dressed up again in the mantle, buckled over his shoulders, looking himself over in a mirror. Now, again, Tony could see Odin in the reflection. He hadn’t glimpsed ‘himself,’ he had yet to see any wolves one way or the other, but he’d seen pale and human-shaped Tony in the floor of the throne room, so it didn’t seem to be some kind of vampire reflection rules of mirrors not showing a true face. Again, he knew he couldn’t ask Loki what the rules were, but he tried to piece them together by himself. 

“I have _needs_ , Loki. What are you going to do about those?” he growled, tugging pointedly at the chain with a _chunk_ -sound. 

“You will wait until my return, or you will be punished,” Loki answered flippantly. “You will be allowed to relieve yourself for the sake of my floor and I will consider feeding you, conditionally.” 

Tony didn’t like the sound of that one bit. He sneered and sighed deeply, shaking his head at Loki’s back. “Why don’t you just tell me what the hell you want, I’m not in the mood for twenty questions.” 

Loki just smiled in the mirror before he turned, folding his hands behind his back and beaming down in a suspiciously _benevolent_ manner. 

“I have to consider your simple nature, of course,” Loki said slowly, that expression now clearly a superior smirk again. “What is the expression on your world, slow steps?” 

“Baby steps,” Tony grunted. 

“Even better,” Loki chuckled. “The next being, you will learn to answer the name I have given you. Freki,” he reminded him. 

“You haven’t given me anything but a headache and a vendetta. Well, a bigger vendetta.” 

“We shall see.” 

Loki reached down and ruffled Tony’s hair, either ignoring or taking pleasure in the glowering hatred being radiated up at him. Until he let go and swept out of the room, leaving Tony alone again. 

The silence rang in Tony’s ears, very literally. He stared at the door as if some new surprise might burst through any moment, new horrors or a rescue, but neither came. It was just him and his thoughts, now that he knew what was happening to him; no trick, no joke, he was so far from home that there was no hope of just breaking loose and making a run for it, even if he could. 

This was no Middle Eastern cave, they could never find him here. Not unless, hope beyond hope, Loki left some small clue, some _hint_ that he wasn’t even on the planet anymore. Bruce might find a trace of something, he was good at that. 

Of course he tried to free himself from the chain again, but it was as futile as before, no matter how thoughtlessly _Loki_ could detach it. The clear head Loki had given him didn’t help anything, but he tried until he began slamming the chain into the rug, screaming in frustration, _howling_ at the open window he couldn’t jump out of. 

“You stupid fuckers!” he screamed, standing as much as he could, falling down, slamming his fists against the floor. “Don’t you see? Can’t you see what’s happening here? Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of superior damned beings? Being taken by a cheap con artist with too much hair gel!” 

No answer. Not that he had really been expecting one. 

Tony sighed and sank back down on the rug, trying to ignore the pressure growing in his bladder, the empty ache in his gut and the less tangible _need_ for a drink. He had bigger problems, of course, but the personal and immediate were difficult to ignore. His thighs and abdomen in particular were a mess of bruises and welts now. He gingerly removed the boots, and fine socks as it turned out, to rub at the marks growing on his ankles and feet from trying to kick Loki in the face and failing miserably. Pains that the devious bastard wasn’t thinking to or wanting to relieve, not like the hangover… Tony still couldn’t be certain if he’d really done it to himself or had been drugged to be brought here. 

He could still be proud that he hadn’t told Loki _all_ of the truth; it wasn’t just the threat of torture that made him hold his tongue for those bastards in the cave, it was threatening someone he’d grown to care about. Knowing he never intended to do anything but conspire to escape, when he wasn’t putting his hands up and obediently answering questions with answers full of lies. 

Eventually, he laid down and tried to rest, even if sleep should be impossible, listening to the gentle flowing of the water fountain in the next room, the breeze through unseen foliage outside. It was all so beautiful, his breathtaking prison. 

He thought about schemes to try and write in dirt or dust to capture someone’s attention, trying to ignore his body’s base needs growing more urgent. Then he fantasized all about his rescue again, doors bursting open to reveal Natasha leading their merry men to his liberation, but the image faded into the simple image of Pepper’s brilliant smile reassuring him that all he had to do was survive captivity again and everything would work out just fine. Just like before, after all the suffering and the maddening confinement, she would be there at the end to welcome him home. 

Pepper would realize something was wrong right away; Pepper would never just leave his disappearance at that no matter how stupid he’d been. She was too smart for that, too tenacious, too good at spotting a lie. 

He loved her so much, so much. The thought of her worrying and frantic was another growing, physical pain in his chest, pricking his eyes with unshed tears. 

Somehow, he did doze, at least a little; he woke up trying to call his armor to him, hand outstretched over the fur in front of him. That was the last thing he could remember doing, he remembered now; testing the new implants he’d given himself, using them to control his new suit with his mind. And then… then he didn’t know. Loki said he’d been drunk; maybe he’d been celebrating. Or Loki was lying to him. He wasn’t sure it mattered. 

He missed his suit. He missed the freedom it gave him before he could miss freedom again. Strange that he slept without nightmares, for once; perhaps because he _knew_ things were pear-shaped, he didn’t have to worry about how it might happen. 

Of course it was Loki that woke him up, it must have been the heavy doors shutting. 

“I still answer to ‘Tony’,” he said, before the subject could even be brought up to taunt him. Tony felt a pang of regret for ever telling Loki anything about Afghanistan, fear that it would come back to haunt him now. 

Loki ignored him, or at least appeared to, sweeping into the room with a gleeful smile as he took his mantle back off again and the heavier looking pieces of his outlandish outfit. Only then, dressed more comfortably in a light tunic, he looked down at Tony, watching him try to pick himself up off the floor in the most comfortable way he could, the least likely to aggravate his burning _necessity of bodily functions_ happening inside. Tony rubbed his arm, wondering if cybernetics could do a lick of good in a world full of magic spells. 

“Sit, Freki. And don’t pretend you don’t understand what I mean,” Loki said dismissively. 

“Or else what? You gonna hit me some more, threaten me, just leave me…” he trailed off as Loki sighed dramatically and raised up his hand to him; not to strike him, but how he’d gestured at the door. 

Things were hazy for a while, after that. 

Tony remembered being on Loki’s leash again, back through the halls and outside, this time. He remembered running across manicured grass and through trees, trying to get away, only to be lured back with scraps out of Loki’s hand, growling, running again. Bounding on four legs, fast and having only the simplest thoughts, _hungry, run, tree, rabbit? chase rabbit rabbit rabbit got away!_

He remembered listening to Loki’s voice, of coming back to him when he held out those meat scraps in his hands and said _Freki_ over and over, baring his teeth down in an expression that Tony didn’t have the wits to decipher just then, unsure if it was a threat or a friendly smile. 

That night he dreamt of leaping through a forest, hunting in the smells of foliage and smaller life teaming in the undergrowth, pursuing his prey over fallen logs and around wide shimmering lakes, tasting blood and meat between his long teeth. Or was it a dream at all, was it real, too? 

In the morning he woke, surprised at first to find soft human hands instead of claws, the same way he’d been disappointed to wake up without his suit being summoned to his call. Tony stared at them and found himself having to catch his breath from some confused panting. 

Once he got a hold of himself, he looked around again; the room was just the same as before, only with the glowing sunshine of early morning illuminating the rooms, and this time the bed behind him was occupied. Loki was sleeping in the middle of it, looking content and dwarfed in the massive piece of furniture. Resting peacefully, looking as relaxed and non-threatening as he ever had. 

Was all that _real?_ Tony groaned softly and looked at his hands again; they had been washed, but there was still dirt under his nails and faintly in the deeper lines of his calloused fingers and palms. Strange ‘lesson’ to be taught, unless Loki really wanted him to be a better pet wolf for him. He did know one thing about wolves, from people he’d known to keep them on Earth; they were never truly domesticated, still able to lunge and bite at a moment’s notice, even their masters. He wouldn’t forget that. 

He must have really done those things. Tony couldn’t even begin to decide how to feel about that, betrayal, horror, confusion, shame, curiosity, so many things churned in his mind the more he tried. Strange to think Loki could _do_ that. Just look at him and make him something else. 

His clothes were different, he realized; a plain red tunic open to the waist, still showing off his arc reactor, which he was sure was intentional. The silvery tone of the knotwork-engraved belt buckle matched it now, too. Loki had clearly put more thought into this. He did have a taste for drama and appearances, even if it was just for himself and his audience of one, that was abundantly clear. 

The boots and knee pads were still there, but laying on the rug beside where Tony had been sleeping, and he sat up gingerly to pull them back on. The hard floor under the warm fur made his shoulder hurt, stiff and not used to sleeping rough; not since Pepper had forbidden crashing in the workshop. He rotated the joint as he figured out the straps and buckles. 

Then there was nothing left to do but sit and stare at Loki and talk himself out of yelling to wake him up and demand answers. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out _that_ would amount to all of nothing. His mind did begin to wander, away from his problems and onto mechanical puzzles he’d been trying to solve in his work, the hydraulic joint for he’d been trying to improve on Nightclub, his latest stealth suit. Trying to deaden the sound it made as the kevlar-polymer and ceramics moved together, the problem was just what he needed. 

Soon, he was leaning on his knees, face in his hand just _thinking_ and oblivious, blueprints and chemical compounds filling his head with images. 

Loki’s feet hitting the floor snapped Tony out of it, chased the pleasant distraction away and brought cold, hard reality back down around his shoulders. He watched Loki slip a gray robe of sorts over his shoulders, running his fingers through his hair in a mirror before he seemed prepared to pay his prisoner much attention. 

“What did you do to me?” Tony asked, resting his arm down on his leg. He would have stood, but the chain was _just barely_ too short to let him. “That wasn’t just an illusion, was it?” 

“Illusion is my gift, not my only talent. I had considerable time with your body to prepare certain other kinds of magic,” Loki answered, a mocking tone. “I would not expect a mere mortal of Midgard to understand.” 

“Afraid I might pick up some of your tricks, take up a Houdini act and hocus pocus my way out of here?” 

“No fear of it at all,” Loki scoffed. “If you will not be an intelligent creature and obey me, you have made your choice. Particularly when I have no patience for your words.” 

Tony did his best to look nonchalant about the idea of losing control over what _species_ he was, implications to his body being experimented on, and put on his best blandly unimpressed expression. 

“This is never going to work. I’m not into that, and sooner or later, I always get what I want, so you do the math. Let me go, right now, and maybe I’ll put in a good word about _your_ floor accommodations when your brother comes to take you in, and he will.” He kept his head up and his voice calmly glib, even convincing himself for a moment that he still had the power to take Loki on, then and there. 

If only _Loki_ seemed remotely impressed. The only response Tony got was a snort, Loki just turned his back on him and walked out of the room to some other part of the suite out of sight, that Tony hadn’t seen inside. 

There was a polite knock on the door that brought him back. Loki cleared his throat and seemed to compose himself before he called out for them to enter; a woman in rich Norse clothing, but not the same outlandish fashion of most people Tony had seen here so far. Some kind of servant, though she didn’t bow or scrape, a regal bearing of her own as she carried a laden breakfast tray out onto the balcony. 

She made quiet small talk with what she thought was her king, but still left again quickly, like a professional with a great deal more to do that day. 

Loki went out of sight on the balcony, too, but a moment later Tony looked down as the chain disconnected itself from the collar, leaving him _apparently_ free to move around. Tony stood slowly, looking hard at the door. He considered if it was a test, or a trick, but not for long. 

“Come here, Freki,” Loki called casually. “Come sit if you want breakfast.” 

Tony was thirsty. Could certainly eat, starting to feel morning hunger rear its head as he was more awake, moving around. He had to consider his other _needs_ again, but for now… the important question was if he would do that or not. 

On his quietly moving feet, thanks to the soft soles of the supple boots, Tony took a brief walk around the room, looking for something, anything that might help him later. The bedroom was as elegant and somehow strangely sparse as the rest of the palace, no pens laying around. He did have to take a hard look at Odin’s armor on a stand, displayed with his sword, but Tony was in no position to try playing Viking, with no training with such a weapon, charging at a magic user that had been amusing himself by transforming Tony into a wolf with no apparent effort at all. 

“ _Now,_ ” came the more impatient call from the balcony. 

This was probably not his moment. So Tony huffed and stalked into the other room, up and out into the morning sunshine. It looked over gleaming buildings, some suspended and moving in the air in defiance of any Earthly understanding of physics. Beyond them, forests and lakes that gave Tony a strange feeling in his gut, where they sprawled in front of a line of mountains. 

That breakfast did look appetizing, too. He realized soon that there was a bowl set apart from the fruits, porridge, bread, and sliced meats Loki was picking at with delicate fingers. The bowl was full of chunks of meat and vegetables that were apparently _cooked,_ at least. 

“Must I repeat myself?” Loki sighed, picking up his spoon and pointing at the stone tile before he used it to take a bite of porridge. 

“What if I’m not hungry?” 

“You will be, given time. You have already eaten from my fingers, starving yourself proves nothing.” 

“God I hate you,” Tony scowled, kneeling there hard with a huff. “I can’t wait to watch your brother beat you again, after this stunt? I’d hate to _be_ you.” 

Loki smirked, but continued eating without response for a few minutes. He was in no rush and didn’t seem concerned about that possibility at all. Not that Tony really expected him to. 

“You did help to teach me a very important lesson, whether you intended to or not. Your heart thwarted a weapon, a tool I had grown too reliant on; you began to show me it is my mind that is my greatest weapon, myself alone. You served me well from the moment we met.” 

Tony scowled and made a disgusted sound. He didn’t want to talk about that. 

“Why did you grab _me_ , really?” Tony asked, instead. 

“As I said; you are more difficult to influence with my powers. I prefer the challenge, and to discover details of the reasons at my leisure.” 

“Oh goodie.” Tony sighed and rolled his eyes. “This is so weird. Like being at a renaissance fair without all the cheesy accents and the… bustiers. I have been so lied to about the cleavage factor involved in all this swords and sorcery bit.” Still, no answer; Tony looked up at Loki and was almost disappointed he couldn’t bait him, not even a little. “No, nothing? You are king now, mandating fashion might be a little draconian, but I figure you’re good with that.” 

Still nothing. 

Loki took another calm bite, then picked up a piece of meat out of the bowl and offered it down without looking at Tony. 

Tony looked at the food and licked his lips, remembering the surreal experience the night before, Loki bending down and tempting him forward with dry jerky. 

“There is no midday meal, as you would understand it on your world. Eat now, or wait until evening to be fed, Freki.” 

“That isn’t my name.” 

“Believe what you like and do as you are told.” 

Tony wasn’t having any of this. He growled and got up again, grabbed the bowl and smashed it on the ground. The thick ceramic fractured on the stone, shards scattered with Tony’s discarded breakfast. 

“Fuck you, pal.” 

That didn’t get a rise out of Loki, either; he _laughed,_ instead, chuckling and eating the piece of meat himself. Loki didn’t even say anything when Tony stalked away, out of sight to fume and sneer and grit his teeth. Tony wanted to stomp and break everything and throw a fit, but the pottery was cathartic enough to let him get a grip. He reined in his temper, then returned to exploring. 

The doors out of the suite of rooms didn’t open. They didn’t even shake or budge, as if just a solid piece of wall. 

There were, however, open doors. A bathroom that was somewhere between a lavish modern and lavish Middle Ages thing. A screen standing in front of a ridiculous toilet that Tony took an embarrassing amount of time to figure out and he was sure had more to do with magic than indoor plumbing. There was a wash basin instead of a sink, which he figured his way around, too. The massive bathtub he didn’t have time to play with, not while he had a somewhat liberated moment to himself for the first time. 

The next door was a study. If he was hoping to steal a pen, he was thwarted by a set of inkwells and a quill. But he could still write. Tony went still, listening hard, looking around the bookshelves and the desk, but Loki seemed willing to continue ignoring him. 

Tony moved quickly, stealing a piece of paper from a small stack, gingerly trying to figure out how to work the pen. At first he used too little ink, then making a huge blob of ink on the scrap of paper, but eventually he scratched out a message, full of splatters and unevenly inked script. 
    
    
         _My name is Anthony Edward Stark, Iron Man, from Earth- Midgard.  
         The man you think is Odin is really Loki in disguise.  
         I am being held against my will.  I am really, really not an animal.  
         Tell Thor if you aren’t Thor._
    

That was all he really _needed,_ wasn’t it? He stopped up the inkwell again, cleaned the quill until it looked how he thought he’d found it, and blew frantically on the paper until it stopped shining wet. He waved it through the air a few times, looking out the doorway, but he seemed to have his moment. The paper was folded and tucked into his boot, waiting to be slipped to someone. 

It was difficult to believe Loki hadn’t considered he would try such a thing, but he had to try, anyway. Had to bet on that arrogance making him forget to cover all his bases. 

Tony continued searching the rooms, but found no better thing to hide on himself. There was a slim knife on the desk, but seemed too obvious, something Loki might miss and search him for, discovering his note in the process. 

Making a show of defeat, Tony noisily threw himself in a chair with a sigh. “This sucks,” he groaned.


	4. Chapter 4

Loki dressed for the day and ignored Tony, until he got him on a leash again, appearing in Loki’s hand with frustrating ease. Frustrating for Tony; Loki just smiled in the face of anger, then set his face in a stoic blank as he dragged his ‘pet’ out into the hall.

Tony expected him to go right to his throne room, but this time, they were going for a walk. Now his head was clear and his mind was his own to go outside and see the world, as he was led, with less kicking and screaming this time. Led out onto that crystal bridge, glittering with every colour of the rainbow in the perfect formations. It would be dazzling, if there wasn’t so much else to look at, too. The impossible architecture set amongst pools of blue water and elegant landscaping, that cosmic sky. He could see now that Asgard was more like a city than a world. A city surrounded by that wilderness on one side, but the front of it fell off into the bright stars and features of space as pictured by an astronomer on acid, with planets glowing soft colours in half-moons behind clouds and set in twinkling stars. 

A human, even a raging narcissist who would love to think of himself as some kind of god, felt dwarfed, alien, and desperately out of place in the face of it all. When he went home, he would have to talk to Jane Foster about being so close to it all. 

At the end of the bridge was a fantastical round structure, with a platform and a serene, dark man in gold armor that looked out into the cosmos as if he could read it all unfolding as clear as black and white text laid out in a book. 

“Heimdall,” Loki greeted. “Is all well in your sight?” 

“All is as it must be, my king,” Heimdall replied, his voice rich and deep, rolling over Tony’s ears like Barry White cranked up to 11. Then he looked down at Tony from his pedestal, glowing gold eyes that he could swear _saw_ into his soul. But the slight smile on the man’s face didn’t waver, to anything but a hint of curiosity in the long gaze. 

More than any of the gods he’d seen, Heimdall had such presence and depth that Tony _knew_ , beyond any doubt, he was a being far beyond his human understanding. And yet, he didn’t feel quite so small, while those infinitely deep eyes were fixated on him, he didn’t even stop to think about trying to send him a message. Tony was tired of feeling small, but it wasn’t so bad coming from this guy. 

“A curious creature,” was the final proclamation. “Strange that a creature of the wilderness would have such depth of soul.” 

Tony had no doubt at all this man could see into his soul, and didn’t mind this guy talking about him like he wasn’t there… strangely. 

“He is unique,” Loki agreed. “I could not resist the temptation to pluck him out of the rabble of animals I found him in.” 

That made Tony manage to break eye contact with Heimdall, to glare at Loki. Loki laughed, but Heimdall didn’t; Tony couldn’t get a read off him at all. 

“Your ravens have not been flocking to you as they once did,” Heimdall remarked, and Tony couldn’t tell if that was related or not. Odin’s ravens… he’d read something about that, once. Birds that whispered the goings-on of the universe into his ears or… something mythical like that. 

The liar didn’t miss a beat, shaking his head slowly. “They have always been free to come and go as they choose. When I need them again, they will come. These are days of peace for us all.” 

“Not all realms are blessed with the prosperity and security of this one,” Heimdall countered. 

“The worlds were made to be governed, not lashed to the tyranny of perfect order,” Loki said, and it was strange how convincing it was to hear out of his mouth. “If I can rely on your eyes, I know what I must this day.” 

Heimdall inclined his head, slow and noble in his own deference. 

“Come, Freki. I must hold court,” Loki said, pulling on the leash until Tony joined him in walking away from the statuesque man in the great magical machine. 

Tony was convinced with only a little looking around that was exactly what it was, some massive piece of _sufficiently advanced_ technology at the end of the rainbow bridge; which would make it the portal to the other planes. The way back to Earth. Tony quietly stored that information away as he reluctantly followed Loki back to his throne, to sit and listen to the incomprehensible affairs of Asgardian politics. 

Sitting on that top step, while Loki was talking to someone with a truly epic beard, Tony reached down as if to scratch at his calf, to reassure himself that the note was still there. He reached down further, but couldn’t feel it, frowning as he realized it _wasn’t_ there anymore. 

The note was gone, but it couldn’t have simply fallen out. 

Tony looked up at Loki, who spared him a quick glance. The briefest little knowing smirk to tell him that there had never been a chance of the note being passed along or seen, that he’d destroyed it, or perhaps just fooled Tony into thinking he’d written it in the first place. 

Loki went back to talking and Tony slumped dejectedly at his feet. So much for that plan. 

Frowning and moping dramatically, Tony went back to considering his options for escape, as far as he could see them. Somehow convincing Heimdall to get him out of there? So far, if anybody could see through the illusion, he would have thought it would be Heimdall, and he did seem to be camped out on that bridge for a reason. 

The massive doors opened and a familiar, echoing laugh made Tony stand up. Thor and four others decked out in Asgardian armor, looking a little rough around the edges as they drew closer. Marks on their armor, dirt smudged, fabric torn here and there and a little singed, all the signs of being in a battle, or a fight. It was easy to picture something _particularly_ Viking having gone down. 

“Greetings father!” Thor cheerfully announced, approaching the throne. There they all knelt and crossed an arm over their chests. 

“Rise, warriors of Asgard. What of Nidavellir?” 

They stood, and a broad man with another spectacular beard laughed and patted his sword. “The dwarves will not be plagued by a dragon this night,” he proclaimed. 

“It was but a child,” the female warrior admitted, beaming with pride just the same. 

As interesting as that was, Tony couldn’t take it anymore. 

Tony grabbed his chain and _yanked_ , surprising Loki, but not freeing himself. “Thor! Thor, _look at me_ , listen to me,” he pleaded, quickly finding eye contact but seeing no revelation on Thor’s face. “Thor, you know who I am, _Tony Stark_ , I’m right in front of you and so is your asshole brother. You have to _listen_ to me, you can’t be this fooled, you have to _see me!”_

“You’re interrupting us, Freki,” Loki said slowly. 

“To Hell with you,” Tony snapped, yanking on the leash again. “I am so going to _end_ you.” 

Loki pulled back, forcing Tony up over his lap, where he clamped his hand over his mouth to stop him from talking. It couldn’t stop some sounds of angry protest, but Loki was _so much stronger_ than he was without his suit. 

“I’m afraid he’s still learning his manners,” Loki remarked, amusement in his voice. “ _Quiet_.” 

Tony growled and glared at him. 

Thor walked up the throne then, and Tony stopped struggling. Loki let go so Thor could reach down and stroke Tony’s head again, rubbing behind his ear in a pleasant and infuriating gesture. 

“Do you have some quarrel with me, noble beast?” Thor asked. 

“What a damned blind idiot you are,” Tony sighed back, but there was no reaction to it, still. Thor just kept touching him like he was running his fingers over soft fur… and it didn’t feel awful to Tony. A strange mix of comforting and humiliating, even if Thor was oblivious, he knew he could trust him. 

“Perhaps we could go hunting, Freki, you would be a swift companion,” Thor said. 

“You have but to ask,” Loki replied for him. 

Maybe Tony was wrong; maybe it was _worse_ , having Thor there, not knowing who he was. 

“Upon my return from Midgard,” Thor promised what he thought was Tony’s uncomprehending face, chuckling when it made Tony grab his wrist and light up with interest. 

Thor detached him easily, pushing a paw aside, perhaps, to straighten and return to the bottom of the throne. “Now we celebrate!” he announced, and his companions cheered as they left.


	5. Chapter 5

Loki loved holding court; sitting, patting Tony’s head while Tony scowled, sometimes having visitors with matters to attend to, but Tony was surprised how much it was empty, quiet and still. Just nothing, fire burning in a nearby brazier, the guards still as statues, and Loki lounging in his throne for most of the day. It could get a little boring; Tony had nothing to do but sit there, all the stress of being here and not a single thing he could do to get rid of it. Baiting Loki wasn’t working, not while he was acting so calm in his seat of power.

When people _had_ come to talk, there were no signs of violent conquest or that draconian fist of rule that Tony had assumed would come from Loki being in charge. Scholars needed more library space, someone needed to be dispatched down a cavern to chase out some sort of pest that kept flying out and harassing a school from the nest it had built underground. Ordinary, quiet things, aside from the return of Thor and his friends. An over-decorated town hall with flowery words and lofty titles for everyone and everything. 

_Tony_ was the only miserable person here. 

After, Loki went for another walk, a diversion to stretch his legs after all that dramatic lounging. 

Tony looked around the gardens outside the palace, finding them both familiar in a maddeningly non-specific way, like he was seeing them for the first time but he knew it wasn't true, hazy and half-forgotten memories clearing up. But there was no running around this time, just strolling through the manicured trees and flowers. Loki strolled; Tony trudged. 

Loki seemed to have a specific path, not wandering, but taking a roundabout route towards a pasture, then more specifically to a stable. A stable covered inside and out with Nordic carvings, a simple building in form but embellished on every edge and corner. 

It smelled like fresh hay and animals inside, a stable hand of some kind smiling and quickly leaving as Loki walked in. Horses, large, powerful and beautiful horses looked out from their stalls, but only one whinnied happily. And that one Loki went right over to, dropping the leash to reach up and embrace its neck with both arms, pressing his face against its jaw in a way that could only be described as… loving. 

Tony thought back to what he’d once read about Loki, in his Norse myth cliff notes, and scoffed. In the story, Loki turned into a mare to distract a horse that was helping some guy build something; Tony couldn’t remember what or why he’d want to, just that the stallion chased Loki around and then made a baby horse with lady horse Loki. He remembered laughing and wondering if Thor had ever heard that one when he was on Earth. “Don’t tell me this is Slipper.” 

“Sleipnir.” 

Tony scoffed again, shaking his head. “You’re fucking with me.” 

“I am not here to indulge your ignorance,” Loki answered impatiently. And entirely serious. 

“But… those stories, about… being a horse and…?” 

“You’re just babbling now. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I was young.” 

Loki had him there. Tony’s head spun as he tried to reconcile it with what he thought reality was supposed to be like, and yet he was watching Loki gently stroke Sleipnir’s cheek with patient tenderness, garnering a gentle nudge back against his arm. 

“You have a kid… that’s a horse… and just let it be a horse?” 

“Would you suggest I should have raised an animal as an Asgardian noble?” 

“No, I don’t… I just don’t get it.” 

“I am entirely aware you don’t ‘get it’,” Loki said, arrogant voice dripping with amusement and disdain. “You will not live for thousands of years, born to rule over the nine realms. Did you think me a mere child as well? My daughter rules the souls of the dead in Hel, my sons will herald the end of all things, in time. You are nothing; of course you do not understand.” 

“Thor, uh… never mentioned any of that. I thought you were a god-years teenager, you sure had the symptoms.” 

“Do not mistake his fondness for humanity with confusion about their place in the greater order. We are _not_ like you.” 

Tony found himself struggling in this debate; Loki was right, it was all larger than life, life as he knew it. None of that tongue-lashing from The Liar explained the horse, but he couldn’t imagine a reason Loki would be lying just then. He remembered something else, too; in the stories, one of Loki’s children was a massive, angry wolf. 

Not knowing what else to do, Tony just laughed at how ridiculous it was. 

Loki paused, then narrowed his eyes at Tony. “Are you mocking me _again?_ ” 

“I never _stopped_ , pal. You’re delusional, a..!” 

Loki let go of Sleipnir and backhanded Tony, sending the mere mortal into the dirt with thoughts of how much Loki enjoyed throwing him around. Especially when that didn’t seem to be enough, he picked Tony up off the ground and threw him into a wood beam. 

For a moment, he was worried about being whipped on a column again. Until Loki grabbed Tony by the hair and dragged him around. Tony panting and trying to breathe, digging his feet into the well-trodden ground. 

“Listen, Junior Leather Couture…” The insult died in his throat when Loki pulled his head over a trough, pushing his nose a fraction of an inch away from the water. 

Tony stared at his rippled expression of complete terror being reflected back at him, clinging to the side of the trough in an attempt to push back. His breath was so violent it made its own ripples in the water, warping and obscuring his face. Loki wasn’t saying anything; the lack of movement or even gloating, just being held into the _threat_ eroded Tony’s desire to taunt about Loki’s aspirations for a good long time. He thought so just then, at least, felt the fear just coiling harder and colder in his belly as the agonizing seconds stretched on. 

“What do you want me to say?” Tony finally pleaded, genuinely unsure if it was really an apology Loki was looking for. 

“Tell me your name.” 

Tony jerked and let out a bitter bark of a laugh, just accomplishing his knees digging deeper into the ground. 

“I can tell you what _you_ think it’s going to be,” Tony hissed. 

Loki began pushing, but Tony knew in a split second where this was going; places he _couldn’t let it go._

“Freki!” he screamed, distorted the water against his lips. 

Loki stopped, just holding him still again. “Make it convincing,” was the impatient reply. 

“Fucking, God, you want, shit,” Tony babbled, trying to keep himself together. “ _You_ call me Freki.” 

“And what should you call me, animal?” 

“Is that a trick question?” 

The words were barely out of Tony’s mouth before he was pushed under, screaming out the last of the air in his lungs before he could stop himself. His legs kicked, his boots dug into the ground, he thrashed while cool water covered his face, his ears, muffling the world and threatening to suffocate him. 

He thought about being in his bathtub in his tower, drunk and ducking himself under the warm, scented water just to see if he could stand to do it, trying to resist how fragile and scared it made him. Then he stopped thinking about anything but air, about the weight growing in his burning chest. 

Tony saw spots, then Loki hauled him back up, arching his head back and letting him suck in loud, frantic breaths. He could feel himself shaking as the water sloshed in the trough. 

“You answer to Freki now,” Loki said, leaning down to speak directly into Tony’s ear. “And I am your master.” 

“I can’t call you…” 

Down again, eyes wide open in the dim, small space of the trough, but this time Tony managed to hold his breath. The experience of how to survive this coming back in force. He twisted and regretted being such a smartass, oh he could _stop_ , he could try, if it kept him out of this again. His rapid, ricocheting thoughts were all convincing himself to behave himself, it was just words, just _words!_

When he was pulled up again, Tony grabbed at Loki’s wrist, tried to shake his head and pry him off. 

“Master, I’ll call you Master, whatever you want.” 

“You will make no further efforts to reveal yourself with tricks,” Loki continued, just full of demands; so much for those baby steps. 

Tony panted, trying to look back at him. “Wouldn’t you?” 

Loki hissed and began pushing again. 

Tony squeezed his eyes shut and tried to immediately relent. “Wait!” he sobbed. 

To his desperate relief, Loki did. 

“Do not test me,” Loki warned. 

“No more tricks,” Tony agreed, bitter words in his mouth. And he thought it would be enough, but Loki pushed _again_ , shoving his nose against the surface of the water. What did he want..? _God_ , bastard. “Master,” Tony added desperately. 

Loki let go and Tony scrambled away from him, making it a few feet and out of reach to look back at Loki, propped up on his elbows as his wet chest heaved. 

“I heard you refer to me as your property, once,” Loki said, calmly taking off a bracer to wring out the cuff of his sleeve. “I have not forgotten that slight. And I will not allow you to forget it, either.” 

Tony stared at him, until Loki put his bracer back on and walked past him, striding away and out the door. 

“Aren’t you hungry?” Loki asked nonchalantly. 

The chain was gone again, Tony realized, patting where it had connected to find the empty ring. He thought about running off… he thought about cheeseburgers and pizzas and those piles of french fries smothered in cheese and bacon and sour cream and everything else that could possibly be dumped all over them. Being eaten back home, safe in his tower, with JARVIS reminding him about eating a healthy meal next time. Pepper taking the AI’s side. Wrapping him up in a blanket and her thin, strong arms by the fire and telling him she loved him. 

At least Pepper wouldn’t see him like _this_ , for all the awful ways she _had_. She didn’t know the whole truth about Afghanistan, and she wouldn’t know it about this, when he got home. _When._

Tony got up and followed Loki on unsteady legs, arms crossed over his chest. He felt a little hazy and jumpy, silently trying to gather his bearings back together on the way back to the palace.


	6. Chapter 6

Back in Loki’s rooms, Tony found that the chain was waiting by ‘his’ rug. Someone had left a bowl of water there, and another bowl of meat and cubed vegetables on a table, with a tall flagon of something gold-amber. Tony had an idea this was going to be a repeat of breakfast.

This time hunger, and probably a little caffeine withdrawal, were giving him a growing headache to match pangs in his stomach. And Tony was still shaken. As soon as he started to consider if he was going to resist or not, already knowing the answer deep down, Loki just pointed at him and gave him something else to dislike by making his clothing vanish. 

“Wash yourself,” Loki insisted. “You’re filthy.” 

“Whose fault is that?” Tony retorted, and flinched a little, but Loki didn’t seem angry about _that_ ; perhaps he just had a temper problem about personal insults that hit too close to home. 

“Yours and yours alone, if you don’t wash yourself.” 

Tony huffed, but he thanked his lucky stars that they were granting him the small mercy of Loki not insisting he’d wash him instead of letting him do it alone. And he did: Loki pulled a book off a shelf and sat down, began reading and let Tony pad into the bathroom by himself. The door refused to close, but Tony couldn’t say he was surprised. 

Using Asgardian bathroom technology was easier this time, now that he’d worked most of it out. At least Loki didn’t seem to consider that he could make him use _trees_ as a toilet, so Tony wouldn’t complain. Hot water and a moment of almost privacy was better than it _could_ be, given the circumstances. Dirt had become mud sticking to his skin from the splashing, speckled and caking in spots and swashes over most of his knees and thighs, some higher; he _needed_ a bath. 

He thought about the trough the second he stepped into the half-full tub. Tony sat down in the middle and sat still for a moment, arms hugged over his knees, glaring at the brassy water controls as if they’d done something wrong. He washed quickly, anxious to get out of the tub, even if it meant confronting Loki again. 

Stomach rumbling and voicing its opinion about food, Tony sighed and knelt down in front of Loki without even being asked; it made Loki smile only a little wickedly at him, closing the book in his lap. This was much different than when Loki was on his throne, putting on his act, seeing his real nature unbridled and vicious. 

“It must be hard on you, pretending to be a good king,” Tony said, in spite of himself. 

“I _am_ a good king. Everyone was simply unwilling to see that,” Loki insisted. 

“You were trampling my planet, making big speeches about _free will_ and heck, I’m kneeling now,” Tony bitterly retorted, gesturing at his legs. “Isn’t that all you wanted?” 

“You have no understanding.” 

“Well explain it to me, Rudolph.” 

Loki glared at him, a deeper and bleaker expression with passing milliseconds, and Tony realized his ‘mistake’ with a jolt in his stomach that was nothing like hunger. Tony looked down and licked his lips, cursing himself silently. His mouth was already watering at the smell of that bowl. 

“Master,” Tony forced himself to say, then set his jaw. 

Now Loki was silent, and when Tony looked up to see if he was about to be beheaded or not, there was a piece of steak held down in front of his face. Tony looked into Loki’s eyes, a paler blue than Thor’s brightness but he could see a little of his friend in there, somehow. Perhaps he just _wanted_ to; he knew they weren’t related by blood. But as Loki had said, _they were not like humans._

Tony reached for the food, only to see it pulled away. 

“Not with your hands,” Loki taunted. 

Silently cursing himself some more, for being spineless and truly pathetic, Tony thought about biting Loki’s fingers, and instead just moved forward and took the meat with his teeth. His stomach was delighted, at least; it was good, perfectly tender, seared, and rare. 

“My deal with the Chitauri had seemed very simple and mutually beneficial, after the void cast me down onto their world,” Loki began, while Tony chewed and listened with a little surprise at getting an actual answer. “They gave me a powerful weapon, an army, the means to rule as I know is my destiny. But I had been taken for a fool, only realizing my mistake in trusting them when I had begun my efforts to conquer your planet. Try not to be so surprised that I could have an error in judgement.” 

“No surprise here,” Tony assured him. It made Loki huff, but smirk and roll his eyes instead of hit him. He wondered if he had been kidnapped because Loki needed someone he could be honest with, and who better than a puny mortal completely shoved under his thumb? He remembered how it could be, sometimes those terrorists in that cave could be astonishingly unguarded with their captives, only to put back on that steeled killer’s face for each other. 

“Their fellowship immediately turned to threats and coercion in their impatience, knowing I had given too much to simply abandon my conquest. I had a great deal of time in my cell beneath this palace to consider how I had been used.” 

“You could have turned on them, helped us. We would have pinned a medal on your chest,” Tony said, as lightly as he could manage. 

“I truly doubt that.” 

“Us humans really do go for a good underdog story, maybe…” 

“Enough,” Loki interrupted sharply, and offered Tony another piece of meat in dainty fingers. 

Tony shut up and ate. 

“I also had time to consider I may have been influenced by the very weapon they had given me to influence others,” Loki said, then sighed, shaking his head. “I cannot be certain. I still do not think mortals are fit to be ruled as the Aseir are, as your betters, but I have seen now exactly how you are a pack of wild dogs fighting over your insignificant scraps. To reach in and attempt to bring order is to welcome being bitten. It is not a firm hand, but some other force that would finally pacify your people.” 

“I don’t see how that’s different,” Tony remarked. “I know, ignorant mortal,” he continued, before Loki could say it again. 

Loki smirked again, briefly, and this time offered up some kind of orange root vegetable that tasted nothing like a carrot. 

It was surreal, being fed by Loki, of all people, while at the same time being chatted with in an astonishingly frank way for a secretive master of deceptions; a way that made Tony just a little more concerned, under his pretense of taking it like a champ. He worried that Loki was so open because he really did know, without a shadow of any doubt, that Tony would never leave this place to share his secrets with anyone. That he would never hold a meaningful conversation with anyone else ever again, and the thought made something in Tony wither. 

Just as Tony was sure he couldn’t put up his brave face anymore, Loki was done with filling his stomach, and instead handed him the tankard. Tony held it a moment and raised an eyebrow, but Loki just stood and rinsed his fingertips in one of the fountains. 

“Drink,” Loki said. “It is my turn to offer. It will help you rest quietly; you are noisy through the night.” 

Tony frowned and shook his head. “I slept fine for a guy that _hasn’t_ been abducted to an alien planet.” He didn’t remember having any nightmares. He thought he’d dreamt about being a wolf all night. 

“You thrashed about and called for your JARVIS and some ‘Mark forty-two’ when you were not mumbling incoherently.” 

Oh. The reminder of waking from his nap to find his armor still impossible to summon made him squeeze his fist and miss his suit a little more profoundly. 

Being a little drugged was probably the _best_ or arguably least-worst thing that could possibly happen to him so far; Tony sat back and drank, rubbing his legs as he knocked the glass back. They weren’t used to kneeling. It wasn’t like he could get any more helpless. He had to admit, it was good, mead instead of beer, sweet almost, but not quite to the point of cloying, and he _really had_ wanted that drink. Loki was right, it did make him feel better, able to calm down and just feel a little relaxing tingle wrap around him. By the time he was finished, not long at all, he could feel whatever was in there with the alcohol making the feeling even stronger. 

It was a little less frightening and horrible to be chained back up and left there while Loki went to dinner. Tony laid down and half-listened to some brief explanation of how Tony could go with him sooner or later, and then he was alone. 

“JARVIS? Wake-up call buddy?” he tried, looking around and hoping beyond hope that would work, that all this was some dream. 

No answer. 

Tony slept. 

He was unsure if he woke or was just dreaming, when he opened his eyes later that night. The room was lit by candles taking an edge off the darkness around him, and above him a faint green glow was mixing with the blue of his arc reactor to illuminate Loki’s face with dim highlights and deep shadows. Loki’s face, right above him, more than uncomfortably close. Frowning in concentration, Loki was touching the arc reactor, fingers on top of it while his hands and thumbs curled around it just below the metal seam was against Tony’s skin. 

It felt _strange_. Not painful, but probing: an odd, sharp taste in his mouth as alien sensations lightly pulsed through his heart. 

“Stopit,” Tony slurred, batting a hand limply at Loki’s arm, but Loki didn’t move a muscle. Tony wasn’t even sure if he was breathing. “Loki,” he tried this time, even as his eyelids grew so heavy he couldn’t keep them open anymore. 

Loki was still perfectly still, but did take a breath to answer. “Back to sleep, my pet,” he said evenly. “I merely look.” 

“Leaveit ‘lone,” Tony breathed, and even that was a struggle, fighting off the insistent embrace of drugged sleep. “Lemme go.” 

“Shh.” 

Loki was silent again after that, and Tony lost his battle to stay awake.


	7. Chapter 7

When Tony woke again, it wasn’t as himself. He was the wolf again, in that strange, narrow view of the world, all instincts and simple thoughts. Forgetting that he had been anything else.

There was very little in between those thoughts and action. When Loki fed him that morning, he _did_ bite his hand, Tony feeling threatened by bared teeth and barking noises he was unable to properly interpret as simply laughter before reacting. 

But while thought was more narrow, perception opened up and let him sense so much more of his surroundings. He could smell the people on the palace, the grounds, and each other; he could hear life bustling down corridors and behind doors Loki never led him through, footsteps and the rise and fall of voices everywhere, echoing and muffled. He could hear them all, through most of the massive palace’s stone walls. None like him, nothing here was like him; he knew he was alone and none of this was his territory. Even outside, it was all heavy with the claim of _these people_ all around him. 

As soon as it would feel oppressive, Loki took him to some open space and let him run, somehow unable to bring himself to go too far, but he lacked the wit to wonder why. He just felt better when he ran, liberated by movement and breathing in the strange world, free to stop and investigate what and who he liked with his nose until he decided to keep running. 

Days passed like this. 

Tony didn’t pay attention to how many, just to the routine, to the changes in it: in movements, in people. He didn’t wonder why Loki called him up on his bed to sleep there one night, he just bore the petting and the sound of his voice with still reserve, enjoying the comfort while he keenly kept an ear up for signs of threatening actions from the snake. 

Nothing stopped seeming like a potential threat. Especially not the man that held his leash. 

In the evenings, he forgot all about Loki when he found himself in a huge, busy room full of people, shouting, and food. Tony worried about stealing table scraps, growled at the smaller dogs there that would make any sign they wanted the pieces that were _his_ , fought them if that wasn’t enough. The dogs milled and lounged about together, but Tony wanted nothing to do with them. He ate his fill, then he curled up by the fire and dozed lightly by himself. Defenses up all the time, awake and looking around at any sudden sound or approach, but the people _and_ the dogs left him alone. 

All he dreamt of was running and chasing and fighting. Great, fearless, unstoppable. 

When Thor came back, Tony recognized his smile and laugh as a gesture of friendship, finally finding someone that didn’t put his hackles up all the time. They went out into the forest together and Tony felt _liberated_ , free to run and chase, ever called back as a favour instead of a command.. Thor tried to direct him in the hunting; eventually, Tony understood and they worked together in the trees, Tony stalked and Thor would bring their prey down once it was flushed out, share it and not make the wolf need to selfishly fight to keep it. 

It felt good. He _knew_ how powerful he was, swift and lethal, with a friend hunting beside him; it felt _right._

They hunted, then they would sleep out under the stars by a campfire, Thor’s rich voice almost constantly in his ears without much meaning. But Tony liked to hear it, anyway. 

He didn’t want to go back to the crowded palace, to Loki. But Thor just smiled and kept going, anyway, carrying their biggest prize over his shoulder. 

Tony growled at Loki’s _teeth_ when they arrived, at the lilt of his voice at being dragged back to Loki’s room and being surrounded by the oppressive smell of him again. And… fear? Something was off, his simple mind concluded. 

Loki closed the door, then reached down and grasped Tony’s head, clinging until everything went briefly _warped_ , that feeling he knew now… that was… 

Tony gasped and fell on his hands, trying to shake off the deeply uncomfortable feeling of adjusting to reality being different and the same again. He was a man again, all those sounds and smells dulled again, bringing his thoughts back up to their usual complex focus. 

“ _Jesus,_ ” he hissed. He bent down and rubbed his head in an attempt to scratch the clouds out, hunching over on his hands and knees. Trying to absorb all those things he remembered as well as who he even was. 

He was a man again, he was _himself._

Slowly, Tony looked up at Loki, trying to see the anxiety he’d found so obvious before, but there wasn’t any. Tony wondered if that was why he found himself significantly less hairy again. 

“You’re freaking out about something,” Tony said, prompting the smallest revealing flash of feeling on Loki’s face. 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Loki insisted, grabbing Tony’s arm and dragging him over to the chain. “I had wondered if leaving you like that too long would play tricks on your feeble mind.” 

It probably had, but that was beside the point. 

“I need to wash off,” Tony growled, “I smell like..” 

“It can wait,” Loki interrupted, and whisked himself out the door, slamming it behind him. As much as those massive, heavy things could be slammed without shaking the walls down. 

“I am a king in _my_ world, too, are you jealous, you bastard!” Tony bellowed, snarling at the door. “Get back here! Don’t you dare..!” he shouted, but Loki was long gone. 

"I _am_ a king." 

Tony sat back and rubbed his head again, trying to take stock of himself; all the fingers and toes, and not _that_ dirty, considering. A couple scratches on his arms and legs, but nothing deep or serious. His arc reactor still glowed like it should, and as hard as it was to gauge in that moment, he didn’t feel any different. He didn’t think. Maybe. 

The spacious, open rooms felt claustrophobic. Unsettled, Tony sat and waited, cursing Loki, himself, and being unable to do anything with his hands. Work would make him feel more human again, at least the Ten Rings had let him do something. Worse than that, he didn’t like just how much he’d started to enjoy himself for a little while. 

People liked to say Tony was a loner, but he had never really been _alone._ His mother, his nanny, his fellow students, his employees, beautiful women, fellow lushes, Rhoady, Pepper. Bruce, Steve, sometimes. Built himself AI and robots for when he needed someone that didn’t sleep and could never say _no_. People for every occasion. Even when he needed someone that hated him enough to fight and rail against. 

Being with someone he could trust, letting go… and the thought made him frown for a new reason, realizing Thor had come back from Earth. He’d come back and seemed happy, unconcerned, not like someone with a missing teammate. Had nobody told him? Tony could only hope that was it, that Thor simply hadn’t been informed, because he didn’t want to think that nobody else knew he was missing, and didn’t want to think that Thor hadn’t been bothered by it, either.


	8. Chapter 8

Tony worked in his head… then he let schematics fall away to daydreams. About being _powerful_ in the way that mattered. He flew through the sky on jets he’d built himself, fell to earth just to blast some of it apart, then took off again and _soared_. He was untouchable, the eagle in the clouds, self-made and answering to no-one, every motion strong and sure, and he _flew_. Could almost feel the acceleration, the surges he knew so well, the pull of the suit’s power moving with his own muscles.

He never used to dream so vividly, awake or asleep, before he became Iron Man. Something in his mind had woken up, but this was a side-effect he never would have imagined. 

He was jarred out of it with a violent shudder when the door opened, rolling into a defensive posture on his hands and knees, as if he could actually go anywhere. Tony still backed off, until the chain started going taut. 

Loki rolled in like a storm, long after dark. The angry figure looked around with his fists raised, as if looking for a target, then _found it;_ Loki glared, still and dark down at Tony. 

Tony couldn’t remember doing anything to piss him off, he hadn’t been _himself_ , but that little detail did nothing to make him feel any better. He kept still, as if that could help. As if he were evading the oncoming violence of the T-Rex in _Jurassic Park_. 

The room lit up all at once, every candle and braiser lighting up in a flash of golden light, and Tony could see the raw fury on Loki’s face, beyond anything he’d seen on that face yet. Loki advanced on him and grabbed him by the collar, just to shove him back down on the rug, sneering close over Tony’s face. Loki’s breath poured over him, full of mead and the well-seasoned meal he’d been eating. Eating without being _handed things_ , that must be nice. 

“Are you mocking me _now?_ ” Loki hissed, squeezing his other hand around Tony’s throat. 

“What?” Tony grabbed onto Loki’s arm, even knowing that pulling him off would be completely hopeless. “No!” he insisted, voice tight. “What are you doing?”. 

The chain detached at some point, because Tony was sailing through the air, impacting against the soft bed instead of a wall or a marble pillar. It still knocked a little wind out of him, but was more disorienting than anything, too fast, forcing him to look around wide-eyed and alarmed before his eyes focused back on _Loki_. 

Loki crawled up onto the bed and ignored Tony’s efforts to crawl away, pinning him down, hands over his head and feet pinned from kicking up. He just smiled at Tony’s growling and snarling, something wordless and instinctual from new instincts taking root inside. 

“Loki…” 

“ _Silence,_ ” Loki hissed toothily. 

“If you wanted someone that can really shut up you shouldn’t have kidnapped _me_ ,” Tony retorted. “You did because you’re bored not trophy collecting, I know damned well..!” 

Loki snapped his fingers and words stopped coming out of Tony’s mouth. Tony made a shocked huffing sound, but nothing he did would make his lips and tongue form syllables. He could feel his muscles being prevented from it, not having forgotten, but being cut short in his increasingly frantic efforts, until he really registered it wasn’t helping. 

Tony turned his head away and squirmed into the bed as Loki began _touching_ him, freed of having to hold him down with his hands. 

_This could not be happening._

But it could, it was: this was the Loki that Tony had fought on Earth, burning with something angry and reckless as he grinned down triumphantly. 

“Submit,” Loki insisted. 

Tony shook his head. 

“Well, we do have plenty of time for that.” Loki brushed his fingers over the arc reactor, then Tony felt that odd tingle again and… _changed._

Not into a wolf, not this time; still human, but smaller underneath Loki’s straddling legs, breasts grown on either side of the arc reactor, hair tickling Tony’s shoulders and more round, soft limbs trying to fight off the magic pinning him down. 

Himself as a woman, making Tony gasp and try to yell in surprised horror at having suddenly lost control of the shape of his body so unexpectedly. 

“No, no,” Loki chuckled, caressing one breast before he made Tony tingle all over again; a larger, different woman, but if he would have recognized himself he didn’t know. Loki did it again, making him a different man, then another man with red-blonde hairs over thick muscles, where he could see himself. The inability to see the arc reactor as these strangers was unnerving. 

“Does this bother you?” he laughed viciously. “You are right, Romanov or the fine Captain would have made much lovelier trophies, but I believe you will learn to obey me without losing your spirit, in whatever guise I wish you to be.” Loki ran his hand over Tony’s belly and his body shimmered back into its own true appearance, his own shape, much to his deep relief, in spite of everything. “Would you trade their freedom for yours?” 

Tony needed very little time to think about that before he shook his head adamantly, boring hatred into Loki’s face with his eyes. He would _never_. The thought he might be forced into making that choice made him sick. 

Loki laughed at him and ran his hands up Tony’s sides, the sound echoed in Tony’s head and he just couldn’t keep looking at him. He squeezed his eyes shut again and put his head up, as if that could help him get further away from being played with. Those hands on him weren’t rough, they were as careful and easy as the gestures Loki always used when they were alone, to cup his glass or pick up a book. The fingers were sweeping and while he wasn’t looking, he could almost fool himself into thinking they didn’t belong to his captor, his torturer, enemy and evil creature. 

At least, for a few moments. Loki growled and grabbed Tony hard again, by the arms, picking him up and throwing him face-down on the bed. Loki kept huffing and snarling and sounded like he was losing his mind somehow, and even now Tony had the presence of mind to wonder what had made him so upset that he was coming back here to take it out on the one person that couldn’t fight him or force Loki to explain himself. 

It was easier to think about it like an out of body experience, thinking about _why_ it was happening, analyzing the situation like a problem, a thrown piston, a _crime scene._

Somewhere, Loki stopped talking or laughing, just those angry sounds that didn’t sound like he was aroused in the slightest, but Tony could still hear him tearing his heavy layers of clothes off, the impact of them all on the floor. It gave Tony a brief time to consider what his options were; lay here and take it, like everything Loki kept doing to him, or… not. 

Tony groaned at himself, in more of that self-hatred he was too accustomed to. 

Then Tony made the sound a moan, moved as much as the invisible bonds would let him, slowly, arching his back and offering himself up. Sex was something he knew plenty about, how to get it from whomever he wanted, and sometimes, amongst all the things he was not proud of, to get things he wanted. It could be spectacularly effective for distracting angry significant others from his mistakes. 

Except Pepper, who… _no_. He forced himself to stop thinking about her. Not now. 

Loki made a curious sound and reached down around Tony, over the collar and up his jaw, stroking over the beard that had been steadily obscuring the shape of his goatee. 

“Have you changed your mind about submitting to me?” 

Tony tested that his jaw still wouldn’t open, so he just nodded. This had to be better than just being a punching bag over and over. 

Things happen very quickly after that, or perhaps Tony’s brain just shut most of itself off in self-defense. Loki had something that smelled like flowers he put all over his fingers, touching Tony even more intimately than he had before with it, an invasive feeling not unlike waking up with those hands and magic inside his arc reactor. Loki did seem to want nothing but letting off some steam, when he pushed inside Tony it was all pain and anger. Pain for Tony, who clung to the bed and prayed for it to be over soon. Mercifully, it was, Loki didn’t taunt or draw it out, he took out his frustration on Tony’s body and then came on his back. 

Loki fell down beside Tony on the bed, panting, rubbing his face with his hands and hiding whatever expression he might have, when Tony did look. Realizing he could move again, Tony did little more than flatten out on the blankets, sore and in some kind of shock. Of all the ways he expected he might get kicked around for amusement, this wasn’t one of them. He just wanted to shove his face in that shiny bedding and never move again, as the strain of fighting and… everything… really settled into his muscles. 

In the stories, it was usually Loki getting his body taken advantage of in the stories, not the other way around. Tony’s brain was re-booting, and back to the detached analysis, filling up with possibilities so he wouldn’t stop to feel anything too much. Too many people had been filling Loki’s head with unhealthy ways of expressing themselves. 

“Are you going to hurt me every time you have a bad mood?” Tony asked, sounding tired to his own ears. 

“Perhaps,” Loki sighed. He looked thoughtful, when he put his arm down and revealed his face, staring up at the high ceiling with an odd and serious expression Tony couldn’t decipher just then. At least he didn’t seem angry anymore, but Loki could be viciously changeable. 

“I really don’t think I’m cut out to be your whipping boy, hn, Master.” _Daddy Issues Man._ “Isn’t being king enough for you? It should be, christ, this place...” Tony trailed off, unsure how even to continue. He didn’t have much energy left. Instead of continuing, he rolled on his side a little, facing Loki with his legs tucked up. 

Now he really _looked_ at all of Loki’s body, only slim compared to figures like Thor and the palace guards and the other Asgardian warriors, the kind of densely cut and muscular of an Olympian back on Earth. Strangely hairless, but a reminder he was not human or Asgardian, under that pale flesh tone and familiar shape. Even naked and limp in afterglow he looked powerful, or perhaps that was Tony’s perspective: the perspective of being relentlessly afraid of Loki’s violent capriciousness. 

“Asgard can feel very small,” Loki said, quiet and thoughtful. “I believe I will take you and Sleipnir to Alfheim for a while. Heimdall won’t question losing track of me in a land so steeped in ancient magic.” 

“Alfheim,” Tony said, a question and a concern. 

But perhaps a magician in some magic place could seen him for who he really was. Tony hardly dared to let a little hope flutter in his belly, but it came, anyway. 

Loki stood instead of answering, pulling Tony off the bed with him. “You will soil the blankets,” he said, as if that was Tony’s fault, and led him to wash up. This time, Loki did wash Tony for him in the bath, climbing into the huge tub with him. Tony let him, feeling too worn out to fight. The hot water stung and kept preventing him from forgetting what had just happened, but he tried. 

He was still wrapped up in a towel when Loki went off to dress, so he kept it around him against the night air, walking out onto the wide balcony. 

Tony sat down, gingerly, against the ornate stone railing, looking down at the ocean of clouds underneath the impossible sky. He sat out there with his legs tucked under him, thinking of absolutely nothing at all, for some time. The solitude was only broken when Loki finally did walk out, with a tall, sweating stein in his hand. Loki crouched down and offered it, the smell of that cold mead sweet and apparent. Hopefully, it was drugged again. He just hoped Loki wouldn’t be experimenting on him again, but he didn’t need to knock Tony out to do that. 

“Here you are, pet,” Loki said, and stroked his hand across Tony’s damp hair. 

“I hate being handed things,” Tony murmured, and it sounded like something he used to say in another life. 

Strangely, Loki didn’t argue. He put the stein down instead of making Tony take it, not even making a remark. Just petting Tony’s hair some more, until he stood again and went back inside. His wolf was a good boy, sitting still until Loki was done and gone. 

Eventually, Tony drank. He could tell it would knock him out again, so he didn’t wait long to get up on his wobbly legs and go back to his rug, curling up tight under the towel. He clung to the fabric with a white-knuckle grip, eyes screwed shut, but both relaxed as whatever Loki kept giving him made his muscles unwind. 

Pepper would be so exasperated at him for using a towel as a blanket, he thought, just before he mercifully fell asleep.


	9. Chapter 9

In the morning, Loki had the decency to let Tony dress himself instead of spiriting them on his body. Tony still didn’t get a choice about _what_ to wear, but he’d take what he could get, increasingly. There was more detail in this tunic, brown with blue embroidered knotwork and wolves on the trim around his chest, still showing off his arc reactor for the one person that could see any of it. There was gray cloth gauntlets and a matching short wrap that he figured out went around his shoulders, and that was the reminder that they were going _out out_ today, remembering that Loki had decided they were going to Alfheim with Sleipnir.

Tony dressed himself slow and groggy, trying to forget about anything else that had happened last night, but not entirely succeeding. He supposed he should be concerned that being Loki’s whipping boy was already seemingly starting to fail in improving the would-be king’s mood. 

Saddlebags were delivered with breakfast, Loki much more interested in packing than eating or even looking at Tony, so Tony got to feed himself, too. Tony watched Loki and wondered idly if Loki was conjuring all these clothes for him by himself or having them made somewhere and magicking them in, but he wasn’t going to ask. No possible compliments. 

Loki dressed simply, leather and a soft shirt and what Tony could only identify as laced breeches without any armor, but Odin’s sword on his belt, and soon tucked under a longer cloak. The vain creature tidied his hair that nobody but Tony could even see before he apparently decided he was prepared to leave. 

Tony was leashed and dragged away from a half-eaten breakfast, but Loki threw the saddlebags over his own shoulder and ignored the complaints, looking like a man on a mission. 

“Where’s the fire?” Tony had to ask, tugging his chain just a little in further complaint. “You got a hot date you forgot to mention? Is Odin as big on sleeping around as you are in all those st…” 

Loki yanked on the leash hard enough to hurt Tony’s throat and cut him off. 

Still not in a good mood, then. 

Tony kept up with Loki’s long strides down the halls, until they turned the corner and came upon one of the most beautiful women that he had ever seen, by the standards of his supermodels on Earth or the unearthly faces here on Asgard. 

The woman had long blonde hair loosely braided down over her shoulder and under a gold headpiece that made the illusion of a halo around her head, in a long green and black gown with all the same complexity of Asgardian fashion and a resemblance to Loki’s colours that he couldn’t help but notice. Something in the shape of the black leather belt, the snakes also engraved on her golden appointments. 

“Princess Sigyn,” Loki said, and Tony couldn’t help but notice his impression of Odin’s staunch expression wavered for a split second. 

“Am I still?” she asked, her voice a soft and gentle sound that perfectly matched her beauty. 

“You have never been judged for the actions of your departed husband,” Loki said, with surprising gentleness right back at her. “His wrongs to you were grave as any to his other kin, Princess.” 

“He made it clear I was not welcome for many years, even during his imprisonment. I should have come in spite of his wishes,” she sighed, crossing her arms and sighing in painfully obvious regret. 

Loki put his hand on her shoulder. “Never doubt he loved you. For everything he has done, I know this; he always cut deepest toward those that had a piece of his heart. I am sure he would have returned to you in time. I would not go looking for him in Hel to find reassurance of what you already know.” 

“When he felt prepared for another bout of commitment,” she agreed, with a bit of a wry smile. “As much as I could ever ask from such a fickle prince.” 

“Just so,” Loki agreed, and took his hand away. 

“I was unsure I would be welcome to stay in Asgard, I was told you were leaving for some days. Forgive me for stopping you on your way,” Sigyn said, looking a bit less unhappy than she had at first. She reached over and stroked Tony’s head, giving him a briefly friendly look. 

“You are always welcome in your home, Princess.” 

“I will not stay long, the very walls ring with painful memories,” she said, her face a bit drawn. “But I will enjoy your gracious hospitality a few days.” 

Sigyn kept stroking his hair, but Tony was far too fascinated by this whole exchange, and her, to try bucking her off. But she was soon gone, anyway, inclining her head and walking away again. 

“Loki, you married an angel,” Tony couldn’t help but point out. “And you drove her off?” 

Loki grunted and yanked painfully on the chain again, continuing his stormy march instead of answering. 

“Is that what yesterday was about? You can’t tell your own wife the truth so you just take it out on me?” 

_“Silence,”_ was all Loki would say. 

“I’m sure she’d understand, christ did you see her? She’s torn up about you, she thinks you’re dead! How is she going to feel when you’re not…” 

Loki grabbed Tony by the throat and picked him up, slamming him into the nearest wall. Tony grabbed his arm with both hands and wondered if he was getting used to this. 

“Enough,” Loki intoned with serious finality. 

Tony looked him square in the eye, but he was tired of being kicked around, all out of snark and struggling for now. Loki glared at him a moment, then let him down and kept pulling him along, out to the wide doors of the palace and onto the crystal bridge. 

Sleipnir was waiting there, Thor not holding his reins, but just standing with him, stroking his neck. Loki’s apparent equine son was much more intimidating now that Tony was being pulled right up to him in broad daylight, able to see all of him. He really _did_ have eight legs, heavy golden and black tack and saddle over his thick dark gray body, even golden hooves he couldn’t tell were natural or plated, but either way, polished to a shine. 

Loki put on the saddlebags with none of the fatherly affection Tony had seen before, just businesslike as he secured them, and Tony’s chain, then swung up into the saddle. 

“Asgard shall await your return, Father,” Thor said cheerfully, his sunny smile a little painful in the face of the lie it was beaming into. 

“I trust you shall keep her safe in my stead,” Loki replied, then looked down at Tony and patted one of Sleipnir’s formidable shoulders. “Up,” he said. 

A little perplexed, Tony went over and put his hands on Sleipnir’s shoulder there, only to yelp as he was dragged up in front of the saddle, held in Loki’s strong arm. 

“I shall return,” Loki said, then urged Sleipnir toward where Heimdall stood watch. 

Sleipnir’s gait was smooth and powerful, unlike any horse Tony had ever ridden. Head up and many hooves graceful on the glittering bridge, Tony had to wonder about how real everything was, as well as what Thor was really seeing when ‘his father’ dragged a ‘wolf’ up onto the massive beast. 

Heimdall inclined his head and inserted his sword into the center of the incredible machine, Loki and Sleipnir not stopping, just dragging Tony with them into a moment of… nothingness. 

A flash of white and unreality, and then they were standing out under another cheerful sun, in the middle of a peaceful field. Trees surrounded them in the distance, further on mountains on one side, light clouds drifting through a bright blue sky. It was not quite like Asgard or Earth, Tony noted. 

Loki set Tony back on the ground, and immediately dismounted, himself, his whole demeanour changing again. He smiled and hugged Sleipnir’s neck, nuzzling against his cheek with a heavy sigh, murmuring into his ear things Tony was sure he wasn’t supposed to hear even if he could. 

Tony looked away and off to the alien wildflowers drifting in the warm breeze through the field, until an unfamiliar voice made him look back with a start. 

“The lady Sigyn would follow me through any truth I gave her, but not all of my truths are things anyone would like to hear,” said the tall woman now caressing Sleipnir’s neck. “She would like to believe that her husband had no true malice in his heart. Thor would like to believe that dear Frigga was his mother.” 

Loki, then. Now a slim and imposing woman with a cascade of red curls and a long forest green gown, rings on every finger and a delicate, familiar shape to her face, with glittering green eyes that looked down at Tony with a penetrating gaze. 

“Thor doesn’t know who his real mother is?” Tony asked, somewhat lamely. He couldn’t help but ask. 

“His mother was a frost giant, as the mother of his father before him. As his supposed brother.” 

Tony gaped a little, at more information he was _sure_ he shouldn’t know, wouldn’t know unless he was meant to be trapped in this farce forever. “How do you know that?” 

“Many of Odin’s secrets became mine of late.” 

Loki looked away from whatever stupid expression Tony had on his face to smile at Sleipnir again. “I shall have this all off you as soon as we make camp,” _she_ promised. “But I need you to drag the burden of the human until he comes to realize it would be futile to try and make his way alone through the Elvish forests.” 

“The human can still hear you,” Tony reminded them both. 

Loki grinned at Tony, then urged Sleipnir along, walking with her hand on the mighty horse’s neck instead of even grabbing the hanging reins at all. She didn’t need to do even that for very long, just walking toward the trees, leading the way with the happy-looking horse trotting behind and bringing Tony with him. 

It was beautiful, but even before they began walking through a path in the forest, Tony realized he was nowhere near Kansas anymore. There was _something_ in the trees that wasn’t normal, some energy, some _presence_ like being watched coming out of everything. Perhaps this was what Loki meant about their being old magic everywhere, but Tony couldn’t help but feel it was more than that, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and left him deeply unsettled, glancing around with the feeling of imminent attack. 

“Must I calm you with mead so early in the day?” Loki laughed. 

Tony frowned at her. “It doesn’t feel right,” he admitted. 

“Of course not, mortals don’t belong here. I did say you would realize you cannot try to escape me on Alfheim.” 

“Maybe I need to find out for myself.” 

“Maybe I will take another Avenger once you fail and are lost to me in the clutches of vicious pixies.” 

Tony huffed and had to admit that didn’t seem very unlikely here. 

The forest didn’t sound ‘right’, not like the birds and rustling leaves he’d ever heard. None of the trees were quite familiar, it was all so _close_ and yet miles away from Earth that Tony walked for a while in silence, just taking it all in. 

They had been walking for some time, long enough for Tony to start really feeling tired and thirsty, but he didn’t bring it up. Instead, he licked his lips, looking at the back of female ginger Loki’s head. 

“I’ve never seen what you really look like, have I?” 

“You have not,” Loki agreed. 

Tony cleared his throat, frowning a moment as he looked down at the rutted path they were walking down. He shifted the grip on his chain to the other hand, rubbing the indents on the released palm with his thumb. 

“You really aren’t ever going to let me go home, are you?” 

Loki stiffened almost imperceptibly, before she looked back over her shoulder with a brief, blank expression. “Why should I?” 

“I need to _work_ , I need something to _do_ ,” Tony pleaded, opening up his chain-marked palm at her. “Six months, a year, I don’t know, my brain is going to rot out and you’ll have a Tony Stark shaped husk to carry around, I’m _dying_ here, I’m an engineer, everything else is window dressing, fuck it really is,” he said. Then expected an angry correction about using his _name_ that didn’t come. 

Loki kept walking for a little while, as if Tony hadn’t said anything, ignoring him until she ultimately responded. 

“We shall see.” 

That would have to be enough for now… it was better than nothing.


	10. Chapter 10

After perhaps a few more hours of walking uneventfully, Loki went off the main track and found a small clearing with a tiny wooden structure and a well-used fire pit already set up, both looking ancient and moss-covered in their own right. It was still light out, but Loki didn’t seem to have any destination in mind, anyway, the hurried pace on Asgard was nowhere to be seen in the female Loki’s casual walk.

Her first order of business was taking off Sleipnir’s saddle and tack, as promised. With careful consideration, she talked to the horse the whole time, smiling and even laughing a few times. 

Gathering firewood hadn’t been the kind of work Tony had meant, but that was what he got. 

Tony watched from a distance, when he brought back an armload of dry wood for a stack by the ring of stones in the middle of the clearing. He didn’t go far to find any of it, sure something was watching him, just waiting for him to wander off to get snatched up by something potentially worse than Loki. He was not stupid enough to go running off into the complete unknown, this was an alien world he knew next to nothing about. It was not his moment. He didn’t have to be asked not to go out of Loki’s sight, not when he could swear there was movement in the corners of his eyes, unnatural rustles in the high, glowing forest canopy. 

_Something_ alright; Tony started and dropped all but one of the sticks of wood as a figure swept past him, swinging out of the trees and into their campsite. 

He held onto his makeshift club as he realized he was looking at an honest-to-God elf, all pointy ears and lithe little frame, bow in hand and white-blonde braids around her leather-clad shoulders. The elf didn’t startle Loki, who calmly walked over to her and gave Tony’s weapon a skeptical eyebrow. 

“You wanted to be useful, go back to it,” Loki chuckled, then looked at the visitor. “I don’t know you,” she said. “But I use this camp often, is there some problem?” 

“Forgive my being suspicious of an Aesir sorceress with a mortal servant and magical glamours on her beast.” 

“Wait, you can see me?” Tony said, dropping his makeshift weapon carelessly on the pile so he could rush over to her, flailing his arms around. The elf turned and looked at him, but didn’t seem impressed. There was nothing but superior disdain as she turned her nose up at him. “I’m talking, right? You can hear that?” 

“How could I not?” the elf scoffed. 

Loki held up a finger and Tony’s jaw snapped shut, unable to open. 

“A choice I am starting to regret,” Loki sighed. “It is a small comfort that his kind don’t live long or I would return him to where I found him,” she said with a smirk, sharing some kind of racist amusement with the elf. 

Tony was waved off… and he left, to huff and sulk on the step in front of the tiny structure. He didn’t think he was that interested in talking to them, anyway. Straight out of _Lord of the Rings_ and even bigger haughty assholes. 

Eventually, the elf left and Tony scowled at Loki until she was paying attention to him again. She rolled her eyes and waved her hand dismissively at Tony, who was happy to find his could move his jaw again. He rubbed it a little, and scowled some more. 

“This is the _worst_ camping trip,” he complained. “Are you just here to show off your human slave to jerks that are into that? She was cute, but that is a _serious_ attitude problem that just is not attractive.” 

“Your lives are but the blink of an eye in a far greater universe, what reason would she have to care for you?” 

“Being awesome,” Tony scoffed. “We do pretty good for bugs on your cosmic windshield, and as I recall there sweetheart, you’re the one that got squashed last time. I saw the look on your face when you stepped into my parlor back on Earth, I _impressed_ you. I bet you only threw me out a window because you were pissy your plus-one quarterstaff didn’t work like the instruction manual promised.” 

“Irrelevant, now,” she said dismissively, smiling coldly as she walked up to Tony. “It is _adorable,_ how high you place your own worth.” 

He flinched hard as she reached forward, placing her fingers on the exposed arc reactor. 

“Listen, I’m not good at this respect thing, and I don’t even know if ‘Master’ works while you’ve got…” 

A surging feeling through his chest cut him off, took his breath away. He looked at her in shock as the charge went through and _out_ of him, a blue spark that he could see having been taken out of him and sent into the campfire. The awkwardly piled wood in the ring of stones caught as the blue surge touched it, an instant crackling, sustained fire. 

“What the shit, what the, what was that?” he gasped, clutching his arc reactor as she let go. The aftershocks, tingling went all through his body and faded into the arc reactor and something in his back _itched_. Eyeing Loki warily, he reached back to scratch down his spine and felt… a raised pattern. 

“What did you _do_ to me!?” he demanded, jumping up and ripping his tunic off, so he could contort around and try to look at his back. 

“You are right, in part. I was certainly impressed by your creation, an impressive energy source for a mere human mind to create.” 

“Nothing _mere_ here, shit, what is that?” 

_That_ was blue and black runes all over Tony’s back, some kind of unearthly sheen fading from them as the afterglow of whatever Loki had done went away. They made concentric circles between his shoulder blades, then a triangle of the symbols in rows that imitated the shape of the arc reactor. More curved lines of runes were in patterns around the shape, some short, some long half-circles all in smaller characters. 

“You used me as a magic Coppertop? I’m not a fucking battery!” Tony yelled, backing away from her. He picked up the tunic where he’d thrown it and clutched it to his chest. “That’s what.. that’s what you’ve been fucking with? _That’s_ why you’ve been drugging me?” 

“You did say it was attached to your heart, I feared you would complicate matters if you became panicked.” 

He was sure thinking about panicking now, stumbling backwards and landing on his ass _hard._ His heart was racing faster and faster in his chest, so hard he could feel it against the housing of the arc reactor. 

Loki walked toward him, making Tony try to kick himself backwards, but his limbs didn’t feel right, he felt dizzy as the full-on panic attack set in. She persisted, kneeling over him and taking his head in her hands. He flinched, but she was gentle, making hushing sounds as she ran her fingers through his hair. 

She took the panic away like she’d fixed his hangover that first morning, petting it away like a wrinkle in his mind, until Tony’s breath came normally again and he was relaxed, but looking up at her warily. 

“Human lives are short,” she said. “It would be wasteful to drive you to a quicker end.” 

Loki held him, which turned into carrying Tony over to their shelter, unsettling bridal-style. 

“Put me down,” Tony complained, squirming until she did. The grip on his hand didn’t go away, but she put him on his feet to open the door. 

Inside the small structure was almost entirely taken up by the bed, which looked simple, but large and freshly made. It was too low for Loki to stand upright, but Tony could in the very center of the peaked roof as he was strong-armed inside. The only window was stained glass, yellows, blues, and white crystals in an abstractly celestial image over the door. 

“What are you doing?” Tony asked, clinging to the tunic again. He dropped it when his hands were jarringly yanked behind his back by a moment of green light. 

Loki pushed him down on the edge of the bed, making him sit. If not for the unnatural calm, Tony thought, he might be freaking out some more, listing everything Loki might be about to do to him, but she just shook her head at the look on Tony’s face. 

“I’m going hunting for our supper. Unlike my brother, I have no desire to take you with me,” she said. Loki knelt and grasped Tony’s ankles, shoving them together. Now they wouldn’t come apart, but he could see the shackles this time, a metal band over his boots. “Stay quiet and you will be quite safe. There is no need to attempt defending Sleipnir with a stick,” she laughed. 

Tony watched her duck out and close the door, leaving him locked up and alone like Loki did far too often. He sighed and flopped back on the bed, frowning up at the rafters. It didn’t take much mulling over the problem to figure he’d finally hit on the real reason Loki grabbed him. The big reason, maybe. 

Loki was a strategist and magic was his primary weapon, aside from the relentless sass; in his position, Tony would have put together a backup for his power, too. Nobody would think to look for one in an _animal_ , he had to give Loki that. A living, breathing backup following Loki around, close at hand and more or less non-threatening. Tony didn’t know what he really looked like to everyone, but some big-bad for this place was probably packing more punch than a big bad wolf. 

By the time Loki came back, Tony had a hundred questions. He knew he had to settle on a couple and not push it, however. Tony did like to think he was being smart and figuring out their delicate balance, between Tony just giving up and utterly rolling over or Loki beating him again. 

Loki didn’t announce him- _her_ self, as such, Tony just heard someone moving around outside at the same time the cuffs came off, just disappearing into nothing. Tony rubbed his wrists and frowned at the door before he got off the bed. He took his time putting his tunic back on and his clothes back together, procrastinating. But it was just too small in there to just hang around, so he stepped outside, where Loki was hanging the body of something not quite like a small deer from a sturdy tree branch. If she wanted help gutting and skinning that, he thought, she was so out of luck. Tony sat down on the step again to watch from a safe distance. 

“How did you know you could tap the arc reactor’s power source?” 

“I suspected,” Loki replied, not looking away from her work. She pulled a knife off her belt and began cutting the animal’s belly open. 

Watching the aftermath of hunting for food was a new experience for Tony and yet not. He could remember Thor doing it and seeing it through the hungry, narrow gaze of his canine self’s eyes. He knew it was his own memories when he was a wolf, but they were so inhuman it was sometimes hard to completely reconcile. He knew he’d hunted down and eaten things all raw and dying in his jaws, and yet… it was another life. 

“How could you possibly suspect that?” 

“I told you, I felt the quality of the power being generated. First hand, as you may recall,” she said wryly. Blasted with a repulsor into a wall, yeah, Tony remembered that. “I suspected I could apply an appropriate translation. Only you mortals think magic is entirely divorced from science.” 

“Translation? Like a hocus-pocus electrical transformer?” 

Loki made a noncommittal sound; probably didn’t have a clue what that meant, Tony thought, but didn’t say. 

“Are you going to kill me?” Tony asked, dourly watching Loki for any reveal on the answer. “I really don’t think I’d survive you tapping me as a power source for a punch-out that makes you desperate enough to try.” 

“Pray it never comes to that.” 

That wasn’t very reassuring. Tony crossed his arms over his stomach and sulked, suddenly not sure he wanted all the answers anymore. He didn’t like any of them, every one he got was more ominous than the next. Ignorance wasn’t bliss but it might be less stressful. 

Loki was in a good mood, at least. Actually relaxed as she spilled entrails all over the ground, miraculously missing getting a spot on the dress, sleeves rolled up so even when they were pulled out and tossed down, it was just her delicate hands drenched red with blood from that pretty brown dead-eyed creature dangling in front of her. 

Tony was more and more certain that Loki wasn’t enjoying ruling Asgard at all. Maybe a power-trip thrill here and there, but out here with just the one arguable subject Loki looked a lot less bored and miserable. Tony was a king, of sorts, back home; he knew the feeling too well not to recognize it in someone else. 

“I’ll try not to be offended. Here I was getting all flattered I’d been kidnapped by someone wanting me for me and exploiting all my toys and talents,” Tony said dryly. 

Loki smirked but didn’t say anything, just continued work hands-deep in gore. 

If Tony knew anything about Loki, it was his/her aversion to being untidy, anything less than perfect, that was obvious so far. Appearances are everything, Tony knew that feeling, too. Tony also figured Loki liked him, thought he was pretty hot, or something, even if he was just letting off some steam he’d demonstrated he thought Tony was an appealing target. She wouldn’t grab at him with those filthy hands. 

Tony swallowed and stood up, walking over to Loki. With slow, deliberate gestures he put his hands on her hips, then wrapped his arms around her and kissed the back of her shoulder as he felt out the shape of her body. Loki stiffened and stopped what she was doing, but didn’t throw him off. 

“What is this?” she asked cautiously. “Is a female form all it took to incite _you_ to seduce _me?_ Your reputation with women did come up in my information on you.” 

“You’re not telling me to fuck off.” 

“I’m questioning your highly suspect motives,” Loki snorted, returning to her work. 

“What, you don’t want me taking any initiative at all? Even if you’re into it?” Tony hummed and hitched her skirt a little, meaningfully, even if it the hem was hardly pulled halfway up her calf. “You’re all I have,” he murmured. I’m all _you_ have, he didn’t say. 

“Tend the fire. I can entertain your hormones later.” 

Tony dropped her skirt and let go, smacking her on the ass before he went to do what he was told. Loki jumped a little and gave him an incredulous look over her shoulder, but still no violence, so Tony figured he was on the right track. Hating himself a little to get a step-up wasn’t a new feeling. It felt great compared to most of life out here in space. 

He didn’t know how to tend a fire, but he poked at it and added a few logs, kept it going well enough. Eventually, Loki came over and shoved some meat on the spit with a simple crank, and told Tony to keep it turning, slowly. He could manage that, too, while she walked toward the nearby creek and later returned a little damp and clean. Loki cleaned up the gore and mess, and as dark fell, she was apparently prepared to come sit by the fire with him, across the flames and roasting not-deer leg. 

“How long are we staying out here?” Tony asked. 

He looked over and Sleipnir was trotting over, settling down heavily with snorts and the impact of his bulk on the grass, apparently wanting to enjoy the warmth of the light, too. 

“I can spare two nights,” Loki replied, smiling at her son. 

Tony looked away and into the glowing coals, feeling like he was intruding, even if he was being forced to be here at all. “You really should talk your wife,” Tony said slowly. 

“Relationship advice from the likes of you? Sigyn does well on her own. When and if I speak with her, she will understand.” 

“Not for her, genius. For you.” 

“Is this part of your charming seduction?” 

Tony scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Oh way to deflect.” 

“Silence now,” Loki sighed, crossing her legs, hands settling on her knees. Tony looked over and saw her eyes closed, head slightly tipped back as she took a few deep breaths. Meditation, perhaps. It looked like meditation, as she quietly sat for minutes that stretched on, the spit kept creaking around and Loki didn’t move as the stars came out overhead. 

Magic. She was working on magic, she had to be. There was a slight green glow as she kept sitting there, confirming the hypothesis. 

Tony watched and considered as he tried to work out what purpose that would have. He’d done enough Eastern fighting to be familiar with the concept, centering and focusing one’s power, he’d seen that pose and calm on people. The power wasn’t usually so glowy and literal, but he wasn’t working blind. 

The meat sweated juice and kept cooking, and Tony wondered if he could do that, too. Magic. 

If Loki had turned him into a human transformer for magic from his arc reactor, if _Loki_ could tap it to do what he pleased… why couldn’t _he_ use it, too? Why wouldn’t Tony Stark, genius, be able to figure out how to do the same thing? 

Tony’s mouth went dry and his palms began to sweat to think of trying. Not in front of Loki. Back on Asgard, perhaps, back when he was locked away for hours on end, unseen and alone. Perhaps he could get away with trying. Perhaps Loki wouldn’t notice. 

Perhaps he could do magic, too.


	11. Chapter 11

Tony couldn’t ask Loki exactly what she was doing, how he could go ahead and start learning how to use her own schemes against her, but he wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the concept of creating something out of thin air.

JARVIS, for instance, had a power source and his wired basis in solid reality, but he came to Tony, in the lab and elsewhere, as holographic projections he’d created. With his perfect digital records of something scanned into his memory, JARVIS could make something in the air for Tony to interact with as part of his nature. The AI had that all as second nature to his deep thinking and growing computer omnipotence, his perfect renderings as he and Tony worked together to create and build. Electricity, photons, magnetism. Engineering could be kind of magical. 

Tony was no expert on the subject, but he was pretty sure he’d been compared to some kind of wizard that constructed impossible things out of nothing… there had to be a word for that. He needed to _really_ be that. And really, really careful, he would probably only have one chance to do anything with any real hocus pocus he could manage to do, if he could. Find some inner power like New Age self-help advice and simply… go from there. Carefully. 

Tony could make his own moment to be free again. He’d done it before. 

Loki was only letting him be human at all for _Loki’s_ amusement, Tony had no doubt at all he would find himself trapped in a body that couldn’t possibly conceive of the higher concepts needed to escape if he tried anything again. He’d seen Loki take people’s free will away, and he knew how easily he could be manipulated by Loki’s spells in him. Perhaps Loki couldn’t do that without the scepter, still safely on Earth… unless Loki stole _that_ when he’d stolen Tony. 

“Why do you stare at me so?” Loki asked, then opened her eyes. It shook Tony out of his daze of thought, focusing on her in the present again. 

“Wondering what you’re doing. People on Earth do that. To relax. Meditation.” 

Loki made a humming sound. "You would not understand." 

"Try me." 

"No. It is no matter, I am distracted by other thoughts." Loki reached into her belt and pulled the knife out, using it to stab at the meat over the fire. "I would attempt another time at a task I once failed in. Another way." 

"What's that?" More openness. Tony still didn't know if he should be relieved or concerned. 

"Peace. My would-be father, and his father before him, were not able to create lasting peace with Jotunheim. I had once thought I could solve the problem where they had not." History lessons had never been this interesting. Tony listened and held the spit as Loki began cutting off a piece of the cooked leg. "Bor conquered them, Odin kept them from their source of power, and I attempted to destroy the realm. They have never ceased to plot against half the realms. The Aesir believe it is their nature, ignorant monsters that want only destruction." 

She held out the knife, handle first, with a cut of juicy meat speared on it. Tony took it, slowly, a bit surprised he was being given a weapon. Yet another blade Loki had no apparent concern with giving him access to. Not that it would be much of a match without his suit. He could box and he’d taken his training in Wing Chun martial arts much, much more seriously in the last few years, but that didn’t prepare him for a knife fight with an alien god. 

More surprising he wasn’t being _fed_. 

"And what do you believe?" he asked. 

There was a long pause, Loki's face going unreadable in the firelight. Something hard and conflicted, perhaps. For a minute, Tony didn't think she was going to answer the question, until she flipped her hair over her shoulder and cleared her throat. 

"I believe I am the finest living tactician of Asgard, perhaps the most capable mage, versed in the arcane arts of three worlds. And my blood is of Jotunheim." 

"Making a point with boundless arrogance is usually my line," Tony remarked with a smirk. 

He flinched as Loki just gave him a withering look, the smirk escaping him. It was safer to take an experimental bite of dinner, which was surprisingly good. It tasted like duck without the grease, maybe, the slight edge of smoke a good spice for it. 

"I believe they are lashing out against their previous failures," Loki mused, a frown twisting her red lips. 

"Well," Tony said with his mouth full, then thought better of it and swallowed. "Fighting hasn't worked, ultimate destruction there didn't seem to help, have you tried diplomacy?" 

Loki scoffed. "They are not interested in diplomacy. Were you not listening? Asgard has brought defeat down on their heads too many times." 

This was like the Middle East, or some Roman war movie. Tony knew about war, but he only started truly paying attention to the reality of it in Afghanistan. "But not subjugation, right? You, uh, Asgard kicked sand in their faces, stole some stuff, but did the army just leave after that? It doesn't sound like Asgard set up a puppet dictator. Did they take any of their people?" 

Visions of Triumph parades full of cheering and the spoils of invasions went through his head and the sour look on Loki's face made him wonder if he was wrong about that. 

"I was the only one." 

Ouch. 

Tony went back to eating, glancing up here and there at Loki's expression of deep thought, glaring into the fire like it could give her an answer. He didn't think it would, but there was something about fire in the reading about Loki from mythology. Strange, for a tiny frost giant. If it were true. 

"Wait, does Jotunheim know you're, uh..." 

"Jotun. I do not know," Loki answered, cautious and thoughtful. 

"Tell them. Tell them Loki of Asgard was really Loki of Jotunheim and the beef wasn't about Asgard at all. It was a Jotun internal affairs dispute. Use that to open up negotiations, and then offer to give them something they'd want. It doesn’t sound like they’re doing much winning and you must have something they'd want with all your magical doo-dads Thor kept on about." Once, after a lot of beer. 

"I do. I am unsure if it is wise to allow them the Casket of Ancient Winters. It is that source of power. If peace is unsuccessful I will have given them the means to attempt conquest in force." 

Maybe not, then. Tony knew about negotiations over a conference table, not in a war room... but he knew enough to know they weren't always so different. Listening to Loki talk about wisdom and rationality was mind-boggling, but Tony went with it, chewing quietly. 

He finished his piece and handed the knife back to Loki, minutes had passed in silence, so he thought it was the end of the conversation, after all. Loki took the dagger and rotated it in her hand, looking at something in the reflective flat of the blade a moment instead of going to eat. 

"I am not merely of Jotunheim," she said unexpectedly. Tony's eyes went up to her face, that same hard, difficult expression as before. "When I betrayed and killed King Laufey I had murdered my true father." 

Tony swallowed, unable to hide his surprise at that. Thor definitely hadn't mentioned that. Not a Jotun dispute, a family dispute. It really could work, but Tony realized he... was helping Loki rule Asgard through his lie. Loki met his wide eyes calmly, until he looked away and she finally cut off a piece for herself. 

Now the conversation was over. 

“Get off that rock and kneel,” Loki commanded, voice irritated, but Tony wasn’t sure if it was at him or not. 

The moss-covered seat was making his ass sore, anyway. Tony knew better than to test Loki with that look chiseled in the currently delicate and feminine face. He knelt beside the rock, cool grass pressing into the bottom of his knees while the warmth of the fire radiated over the tops of them. 

Loki picked up a wine skin from beside her own rock and tossed it at Tony. 

“It is not drugged,” she said, and began ignoring Tony. He suspected that Loki just wanted to remind both of them of the power dynamic here, angrily rewarding Tony with a scowl while she made him look exactly like a mortal servant of an Aesir. But who knew; male or female, Loki was angry and crazy. He couldn’t forget that, no matter how rational she was being for a brief window of time. 

He tapped his fingers on the arc reactor a little, until he realized he was doing it. Then he sipped cautiously at the mead in the skin, tasting of honey and leather, but his old friend alcohol didn’t let him down when he felt completely awful. He started feeling warmer, less tightly wound in things he had no control over. 

The rest of their meal was in silence, even after, when Loki led him to wash up in the creek. Tony only stumbled a little, from a combination of mead and numb sat-upon legs in the darkness. Through the trees she had a ball of green light follow them, but at the edge of the water the moon was bright enough to be a big silver illumination for them. 

They prepared to settle in for the evening, Loki even let Tony wander a short way into the trees to relieve himself in privacy, and then they returned to the campsite. Tony stood by the tiny shelter while Loki said goodnight to Sleipnir, watching with a tipsy, conflicted feeling. Loki could be so vicious and hateful, but there was none of that in the gentle scratch behind the ears and the smiling kiss on the horse’s broad cheek. 

Loki then stood and returned to Tony, urging him to step inside first. It was oppressively black in there, until Loki used her own magic to light a small oil lantern in the corner, swinging from the ceiling. It cast long shadows as Loki undressed, taking off her belt, her shoes, then finally her dress, stripped down to a white slip. The cloth concealed little of the small breasts and muscular figure underneath, still adorned with that spill of red curls around her shoulders, deceptively delicate fingers glinting with jewelry. The knife was laid in the bed against the wall on her side. 

Tony watched her, then realized she was sitting on the edge of the bed watching him back. He cleared his throat uncomfortably and did much the same thing, sitting down to unlace his boots. 

She was probably waiting for him to come on to her again. Tony wasn’t sure if he wanted to. She was beautiful, but he hated her. She was powerful and a good dose of evil but he still wanted to do something on _his_ terms. Anything. Bonus points if it felt good. So he stripped down, kept stripping until everything was a pile on his side of the bed near the wall. 

Naked, Tony knelt down beside her, wrapped an arm slowly around her waist and kissed at her neck again, experimentally. He almost flinched back, but she didn’t didn’t lash out or move at all, just breathed and closed her eyes. She felt just a little too cold to the touch, compared to a person or Thor’s sunny warmth. It was a little unsettling, but he pushed past it. 

Forget it was Loki, Tony told himself. Forget everything, it was just another beautiful woman. Perhaps an android, with that cool, flawless skin. He could be into that. 

He cupped her breast through the thin fabric, rolled her nipple between his fingers and made her sigh softly. Her hand reached up and rested over his as it worked, fingers brushing his bruised wrists. 

Tony had bruises everywhere, but he realized he hadn’t even been noticing them anymore. Around the collar that was starting to feel like it had always been there, over his back, up and down his arms, but he’d forgotten all about them until he felt Loki touching some, from some combination of manacles and angry grips on them. 

He drifted a moment, distracted, shaken when she got up and moved onto the bed, kneeling just long enough to slip her last piece of clothing off over her head. Now pale skin glowed in the lamp light, Loki’s body lithe and strong and too-perfect, familiar, somehow, even with the gentle curves and swells of a female shape. 

Surreal as it was, he could almost forget who he was. That she let him lay her down on the bed, not touching back until he was straddling her waist and kissing around her collarbone, bracing himself up with one hand on the bed, the other feeling the shape of her hard, subtle muscles on her belly. She reached up and stroked his hips, then explored around to his cock, light grip that made his suck in a breath for so many reasons. He wasn’t hard, but his cock knew what those gestures meant and was starting to rise to the occasion, oblivious to the torrent of hot and cold rushing through his other head. 

Her hand left his hip and she began touching herself underneath him, stroking both of them with the same pace. Touching a vulva that was as hairless as the rest of her body, like Loki’s seemed to always be. With his beard growing in and the dark hair sprinkled all down his body Tony felt like he really might look to be some kind of wild and not quite domesticated in comparison. 

There was no talking, no kissing each other’s faces as they kept touching each other, the sound of their breathing becoming panting in the small space, bodies moving closer, until she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in. Tony fought to keep his balance and take hold of himself with one hand, guiding his way in. He was on top, but she was strong and still somehow keeping a level of control of both of them, her hips moving up to slide him inside of her before he could. 

Tony gasped and caught her hand against the bed, lacing their fingers together and using it for balance as he began to move his hips back and forth against hers. 

It was almost like really making love, not at all the angry fuck he would have suspected. He began to sweat first, but so did she, looking into his eyes with an expression he wasn’t even going to try and decipher. 

When she was close, she began touching herself around Tony’s motion, stopped looking at him to arch her back and throw her head back, the increasingly frenetic fingers over her clitoris rubbing against him by accident. She came with a soft sigh and a tightening around him, permission he took to come, too, a few more desperate thrusts and he was clutching around her just as tightly. 

For a few seconds, he was nowhere at all but blissed out, high on orgasm. 

Catching his breath, he realized how tightly he was holding her hand, and now he had the presence of mind to feel embarrassed about it. Even more than willingly pleasuring his captor, feelings he didn’t want to explore in any greater detail, ever. It was a relief that Loki was relaxing with her eyes closed, seemingly ignoring that Tony was on top of her at all. 

He let go, palm sweaty, all of him chilling sweat, rolling off and back to the edge of the bed. 

Tony needed out. Washing would be a perfect excuse. He wasted no time pulling his boots back on, forgetting about socks for now, just throwing the short cloak around his shoulders. His arc reactor would help him find his way well enough. The fire would guide his way back. 

Loki didn’t say anything as he stepped out, though Sleipnir did raise his head curiously, watching from the other side of the dying fire. Sleipnir’s eyes looked too deep and glowing too brightly, his hair too dark, his powerful shape too well-defined just then. Tony turned away and walked into the trees and down to the creek with only a few stumbles. 

The water was bracing against his flushed skin, but it was just what he needed. 

What was he even thinking? He didn’t feel any better, not now that it was over. He wasn’t sure if it had been worth it. 

Once Tony found his way back to the campsite he found the skin of mead again, drinking deeply before he went back inside. His boots were heavier on the wood, it took longer to get out of his boots this time, but his fingers tingled pleasantly. 

Loki was already tucked into bed, looking to be already asleep under the blankets. But after Tony crawled in beside her, she lifted her hand and the lantern went out, bringing back the oppressive dark. 

Tony curled up as far over on his side as he could get, passing out blessedly quickly.


	12. Chapter 12

Tony woke carefully the next morning. If he’d had any nightmares he didn’t remember them, but he suspected he had, with how his limbs were twisted in the blankets. Or he was just getting used to not having blankets, perhaps he’d been trying to fight them off. He blinked his eyes open and looked up at the coloured glass window, casting gold and blue over the bed with the morning sunshine.

He stretched very slowly, then turned a bit to see Loki was still sound asleep, sprawled out on her belly, a lock of hair moving back and forth over her face with her deep, steady breaths. It would be easy to believe she really was some innocent stranger, all the sharp darkness in her face chased away by lax muscles and dreams. Not the same face that laughed while Loki was hurting him for being himself. 

She was beautiful and he hated her. 

Loki’s dagger was gleaming on the bed, just sitting there against the wooden wall. 

The sight of it made Tony freeze, not daring to breathe as his mind began to race. _This_ could be his moment, coming to him after all. If he killed Loki it stood to reason her spells would fail, that was how it worked in movies, right? Someone would eventually come looking for their king on Alfheim and he could be there waiting with his story and demand to see Thor. The road back to the field they’d transported into wouldn’t be hard to find. 

If he killed Loki he would be free. 

When Tony began to move, it was as slowly and cautiously as he could ever remember moving. He sat up as he moved out of the blankets, gingerly keeping them from moving on Loki’s side of the bed. He breathed slowly and quietly through his nose, hands shaking ever so slightly, every sound painfully loud as he strove for silence. 

He pulled himself closer, one limb, one tiny motion at a time, until he had his knees painfully close to Loki’s side, wincing at the dip in the bed as he began to lean over her prone body. 

His hand reached for the dagger, closer, _so fucking close_ until his fingers were wrapped around the grip. 

At that moment Loki made a sound and turned up, looking at Tony with sleepy confusion. 

Tony _moved_ on pure instinct, even as sick horror flashed through his body. Urgent terror forced his arm to snap down with all the strength in his body. 

Loki was _faster_. Faster and stronger, she caught sight of the glint of the blade, flipping on her back fast enough to catch Tony’s wrist as the dagger was hitting her skin, motion making it drag a bleeding slice over her ribs. She squeezed Tony’s wrist until he felt something pop in his arm, forcing the dagger to fall out of his fingers and a pained sound out of throat. 

“Treacherous beast,” Loki snarled, eyes flashing with furious green fire. 

“Please…” Tony started, but Loki was having none of it. 

She slammed him down on his back, holding him down by his arms and leaning over him with an enraged snarl on her face. 

“I want my life back!” Tony yelled, struggling against her: there was something definitely wrong with that wrist. “Hell, I liked our other naked wrestling better. Please, fuck, I just want my life back.” 

Loki narrowed her eyes at him, somehow managing to look even _angrier_ at that. _Betrayed,_ of all the damned things. 

“I am not prepared to let you have it.” 

“Loki…” 

She let go of his injured wrist to grab his neck, the grip cutting off his air. 

Tony fought and thrashed, but she didn’t let go. He began to see spots, feel his chest burn with something far too familiar and heavy as his lungs begged for oxygen, but she kept holding him down without letting go. 

_They won’t kill you, you’re too valuable to snuff out and throw away._

Loki can’t kill you. 

The mantra repeated through the panic, the darkness surrounding his vision as he couldn’t struggle anymore, until he wasn’t seeing or thinking anything at all. 

He didn’t die. 

It was his first thought as he came-to, a much less pleasant experience than the first time that morning. Tony felt cold and sore all over, groaning at the throbbing in his head. He reached up to rub it and found resistance with a dull chiming of chains… unpleasantly like his first morning on Asgard, naked, disoriented and miserable. 

Tony wasn’t on Asgard, not this time. When he cracked open his eyes he saw he was still at the campsite, outside the shelter. The alien sun was moving in the sky and he was chained by the wrists and collar in a shadow of the trees at one side of the building, laying on mossy ground that hadn’t had a chance to be warmed up by sunshine. He was shivering a little, in spite of the growing warmth in the air; the ground was sucking all the heat out of his body. 

The rest of the morning came back to him as Tony struggled to sit up, managing to prop his back up against the wall. He knew he couldn’t fault himself for trying, could he? But he still mourned that he had probably stamped out any goodwill Loki had been starting to harbour for him. He could fault himself for _failing_. And feeling something suspiciously like guilt hanging around his shoulders. 

Perhaps not _all_ the goodwill. His wrist looked like it had been healing for days, not hurting like something was broken anymore. On top of that, he looked back and saw his short gray cape folded on the moss beside him. Tony shivered again as he pulled it under and around him as much as he could manage, immediately relaxing into the small but warm wool cloth. 

Settling again, he noticed that it was silent. Not only did he not see Loki or Sleipnir, but the fire was down to coals, having been re-lit and left to die again. Alien birds were chirping in the trees, but there was indication anybody else was around, even that feeling of being watched was gone. 

“Alright, then,” he murmured to himself. “Just you and me.” 

Iron Man and his arc reactor. 

A lesson of martial arts had been centering himself, something he was never particularly good at, but there was a clear and glowing center to focus on for this try. Tony arranged himself cross-legged and pulled his cape up so he could relax his hands without losing it. 

Deep breaths, eyes closed. Inhale, exhale, in and out for a little while, then shifting his attention onto the arc reactor. The feeling of it between his severed ribs, seated in his chest with metal grafts he’d seated along the remains of those ribs himself. The housing was a small ache he didn’t even feel anymore, not without stretching his arms up, but now he wanted to, for a little while, letting it happen. 

The shape of the circle clear in his mind, he pictured the reactor itself now. The shape of where it was seated against his flesh, the wires running from the base plate into his heart, up into the glowing blue. He’d seen it so many times, knew it as intimately as everything else he’d created with care. The shape of every component, the invisible magnetic field lines that the charged plasma particles raced along. He pictured every piece, every curve of the coils, every plane of the scattering device, every connection and the flow of energy through them. 

The triangle of glowing material he’d created himself, the shape reflected in the front of the reactor. The shapes echoed along his back now. Tony pictured what little he’d seen of the marks on his skin, the ones he’d been ignorant of for he didn’t know how long, the mirror of his well-known creation, the translation into something he didn’t quite understand. 

Power from the core, power into his body and _out._

His heart skipped a beat and he _felt something._

Tony opened his eyes and held his hands up, as if they were cupped around an invisible ball, and thought about _light._ Thought about the illumination Loki had created the night before, only coming out of himself, through the old and new pathways and through an invisible filament between his hands. 

He frowned in concentration, stared and glared and wanted until he saw it. The smallest glow of magical blue between his hands, growing stronger and stronger. 

Magical lightbulb, all by himself, drawn out like a hologram from projector space, if the space and the power was _himself_. If a hologram could project the warmth of a lightbulb against his palms. 

With a sigh of triumph and relief at his discovery, Tony relaxed and put his hands down, letting the shape of a lightbulb become more cohesive and float in front of him. 

The wind gusted and spooked him then; in a reflex, Tony snapped his hands together and shattered the fragile creation, energy spilling over his fingers and dissipating into nothing. He held his breath, but there was only the brief wind through the trees. 

Tony could create constructs. Out of thin air. 

He would have to be very, very careful about teaching himself to go bigger with it. Loki would be furious. As much as Tony wanted to be free, he realized he wanted other things from Loki, too. To come back and forgive him, give him back his clothes and the mead and some work to do. He wanted to be free, of course he did, with every instinct in him. But some of those instincts were piping up and telling him _be good, it’s better that way._

It was better to give in enough to keep from being chained up and alone all the time. 

Time kept passing, the sun kept rising, until it was high in the sky and falling on him. 

Tony curled up tighter and hugged his legs, resting his cheek on his knees, not liking the thoughts that rushed in if he liked it or not. 

Loki wasn’t always cruel. 

He shouldn’t have tried to hurt Loki. It was stupid. Loki was easier to handle when they weren’t so unhappy. Wouldn’t have hurt him if he didn’t do it first. 

_Stockholm Syndrome. Appeasement is a reaction to traumatic entrapment._

Tony hissed and shoved his palms into his eyes.


	13. Chapter 13

In the empty, lonely space of The Waiting for Loki, Tony’s mind filled itself up. Usually with work, but sometimes it was memories of home that felt like fantasies. In that space, too anxious to try playing with magic, he thought about Rhodey.

Tony loved Rhodey for being a better man than he was, always, even when he was _so frustrating_ about it. About feeling so good about being a good soldier and following orders, even more than Steve did, as far as Tony knew. But he didn’t know Steve Rogers all that well yet, really, nothing like how he knew his best friend. Steve Rogers reminded him too much of his father, and he was sure, ironically, the reverse was also true; Tony being almost but not at all like an old friend from that other life. He’d been wondering if Howard Stark’s memory would keep him and Steve from ever being friends, the way it had pushed him and Rhodey so much closer. His brother of _choice_ , in the way even an orphaned adult had to pick a new family to get along. JARVIS told him that once, probably read it on the internet, but he was usually right about everything. 

He wondered, perversely, what Rhodey would think if he saw him now. Rhodey had seen Tony at nearly every low he had in his life, and yet, he’d still kept coming back to help prop him up again when the next one came along. If he needed a hand or a swift kick in the ass, Rhodey was there and ready to do it for him. Tony wasn’t sure which one of those he needed right now, but Rhodey would. 

The thought of anybody else showing up and finding Tony there, chained up like an animal and waiting to grovel in front of a crazy evil supervillain was almost unbearable. Much as he desperately longed for a rescue. But he wished he could hear the sound of Warmachine landing and walking towards him so hard that Tony actually thought he did, ever so briefly. Right beyond the tiny cabin, about to turn the corner and flip up his face plate to screw up his dark face in a way that was somehow not pity or disgust with his concern. Rip the chains right out of the wall. Maybe Rhodey would just smile with relief and laugh about how much cab fare would cost back to Earth without Iron Man there to scoop up the fleshy parts of Tony Stark and fly them back home with him. 

He needed to work on the efficiency of the secondary thrusters on Mark 39. Starboost needed to be more effective in space. 

A little of James Rhodes’s dry levity would go a long way, Tony thought. 

Eventually, he decided (or hoped) that Rhodey would tell him that it was okay to give in to taking orders from Loki. To do what he had to do, head down and surviving to fight another, more auspicious day. He would never tell Rhodey any of the feelings mixed in with hatred and fear that Tony had when he looked at Loki, just those, and he’d understand enough to pat Tony on the shoulder and tell him he’d done the right thing. 

He _knew_ JARVIS would never judge him for it, for anything but not taking care of himself. His missing limb whose absence ached so very differently than everyone else’s. 

Then he put his palms back in his eyes to block out the light and focused very hard on remembering the details of Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy’s faces, when they were angry at him, or smiling, every image he could recall. Tony didn’t want to lose them, to let the memory of them fade even a little, without the photographs he used to remember the Jarvis of flesh and blood and his mother. Even Bruce he spent time thinking about, thoughtfully fiddling with a pen in the lab Tony happily built for him, followed by the other Avengers with their game faces on. He remembered his bots after that, inside and out. He promised himself he’d be nicer to them when he got home. All of them, but especially his simple mechanical children. Devoted Dum-E and hapless U. 

Loki didn’t come back until the sun was already starting to set again. 

By then Tony was thirsty and ravenous to the point of giving into _circumstances_ over dignity. He made a point of kneeling down where he was, gray wool wrapped tight around him, watching Loki lead Sleipnir into the camp. The pictures running through his head were filed away and Tony sat up, straightening to put some small shred of dignity in waiting like that on the moss. 

He wondered if he should ever tell Loki about the press conference after Afghanistan, or others like it, where he got a crowd to kneel without a threat or a weapon, but vulnerable charm and earned influence. Perhaps it would be easier for Loki to rule if knew better why people follow out of something besides fear or deception, but Tony dismissed the idea. Tony knew it was one thing to behave and another to go out of his way to help the self-styled deity. Again. 

Loki ignored him at first, taking packs off Sleipnir’s back like the day before, and they looked heavier this time. Tony couldn’t help but wonder where Loki had been and what he’d been picking up, but didn’t ask. Soon enough, Loki’s tall female figure was swaying over, tossing a cascade of gleaming red hair over her shoulder with a sigh. Her lips pinched a little as she looked down at Tony, the water skin in her hand. 

“I’m disappointed in you, little wolf,” she said, an edge of scorn in her voice. “And myself for thinking I had no reason to be concerned over someone else’s silver tongue, for once.” 

“I didn’t plan, it was just…” 

Loki threw the water skin at Tony’s chest with more force than was strictly necessary, cutting him off. “Not a _word_ ,” she hissed. “Not if you want to drink that.” 

He did; so he shut up and chugged down the water, instead. 

“I am doubly a fool to put any trust in you,” she sighed, “if you cannot even trust yourself.” 

Tony opened his mouth to retort, thought better of it, and went back to drinking the most delicious lukewarm leather-tainted river water he’d ever had. It was then he noticed that Loki was keeping one hand behind her back. Instead of saying anything, he gave her arm a pointed look and raised an eyebrow. 

“I miss the blue eyes, they remind me of the nicer brother,” Tony grumbled. Maybe asking for it; Loki just scowled a little too much. A palpable hit. 

She waited until he was done, taking a breath and handing back the now empty water skin. Loki took it and set it aside, going down on one knee in front of him… holding up a familiar object. The gag-no, _muzzle_ that Loki had worn when he’d been taken back to Asgard. 

Loki had been wearing it the last time Tony saw him on Earth, all worn steel, with pointless gold decorations like everything the Asgardians ever made. And Loki’s defeated eyes had looked at him over it, before he looked away and was gone in a flash of light. Tony remembered that moment vividly, the end of something profound. 

“No.” 

Loki narrowed her eyes. “Would you prefer an unpleasant visit to the water?” 

“No,” Tony immediately agreed. He knew that was no idle threat. 

“Good. Open your mouth.” 

Tony licked his lips and eyed her warily, but there was nothing malicious there. Not this time. He really believed this wasn’t some introduction to something worse, that Loki just wanted to shut him up. 

So he closed his eyes and opened his mouth, because it was better than anything else Loki had done to punish him. 

It didn’t even hurt, buckled in, pressing down his tongue and keeping his jaw shut as soon as he instinctively bit down on the interior. Rubbery over something hard and unyielding. 

Loki buckled it down behind Tony’s head, then settled her hands on his shoulders. 

“I grow weary of hurting you, little wolf,” she sighed. “Give me no further reason to do so, I will not. But for this night, think on the indignity your people inflicted upon a prince of gods and what you have done to deserve it now.” 

Her hands squeezed and she kissed Tony’s cheek. 

He tried to glare at her while he felt a flutter in his gut and knew he was done for. A little sweetness from the evil beauty and something in Tony melted. 

Loki took his hands and squeezed them like a friend or a lover, revealing that he’d come unchained from the wall, the manacles only fastened to each other now. Her head tilted slightly as she smiled thinly at him, as if being patient with someone simple. So close that, with anyone else, Tony would have been able to feel their warmth. 

“Get dressed and gather more wood for the fire,” she said, and kissed his other cheek, before she stood up and walked away. 

Tony glared at her as she walked away, doubly hard because he hadn’t been able to glare at _himself_ in any mirrors for a while now. No bootstraps to pull up, but he did pull up his pants inside, and strapped himself into his boots, then began wandering in and out of the trees, gathering fallen branches. 

As darkness fell, Loki meditated again, before cooking all by herself. Tony said nothing for the brief time he had the muzzle off to kneel at her feet and be fed dinner, then enough mead that he wandered through the rest of the night and down into her bed to sleep without much thought at all, about anything. 

It wasn’t until the next morning, marching back through the forest to the Bifrost, that Tony thought about anything again. 

The morning had changed nothing, not either of them, but he did feel like a different man going back to Asgard. Forgetting, most of the time, that he still had manacles on, no urging needed to walk beside Sleipnir. It felt like the safest spot to be in the alien forest. 

They walked into that open field and Tony wondered where Pepper was at that moment, worlds away. He wondered what day it was; it might be the holidays now. She might be having Christmas alone. Hopefully not, hopefully she had Christmas dinner with Rhodey and his mother: Roberta, with the cozy little home in Philadelphia that could fill up with the smell of a home-cooked meal and make anybody forget about all the awful things happening in the outside world. 

Sleipnir clopped to a halt and Loki stepped in front of Tony, back in gleaming armour, his imperious _male_ form. But not what Loki really looked like. 

Loki’s blue eyes were gone. He’d kept the glittering green of his female disguise, a strange effort nobody else would notice. A reminder that Tony and Loki had their own little reality together, carefully constructed to keep everyone else _out._

Roberta Rhodes might be slow-cooking a roast, laughing as she held court in her kitchen, smiling until she made everyone else smile. 

Home was so far away. 

Loki stroked Tony’s hair and called for Heimdall to bring them back.


	14. Chapter 14

Tony decided that he hated Fandral most of all.

Sif and the Warriors Three were waiting for their king when Loki and Tony returned to Asgard, coming to a stop on the sparkling rainbow bridge. Loki let Tony down and almost all of them politely refrained from commenting on the muzzle. Heimdall gave Tony a long look, but Fandral interrupted the moment by laughing and scratching at Tony’s hair with a shit-eating grin on his goateed face. 

If not for the muzzle, he might have tried to take a piece out of that hand on him. 

“Who did he bite? Someone deserving, your majesty?” 

It was small comfort that Loki didn’t look amused, either. “Possibly you, next, if you continue,” Loki remarked imperiously. 

Fandral seemed convinced; he gave Tony some space. 

The conversation went to the goings-on in the king's absence, gossip, really, as little of note seemed to have been missed. Other than Princess Sigyn having already left. Loki was riding Sleipnir back at a walk, while everyone else followed beside on foot, Tony right at the stirrup to keep slack on his leash. 

Tony paid attention to the view, Asgard floating gloriously in the cosmos. For a moment everything was perfectly clear, why did he keep fighting his place beneath the people of this Olympus? 

Fandral cackled gratingly and shook Tony out of it. 

Tony spent the rest of the walk back to the palace reciting his name, his patents, all the holdings and trademarks and creations from his hands or his name. Silently reminding himself who he was, someone that should be above lapses into buying the lies of their captor. 

But it was very easy to settle back into life on Asgard. Perhaps it was the muzzle, creating a barrier between himself and everything outside his head. Unable to contribute even much noise, so somehow less present at all. 

He paid attention to the people at court to pass the time of sitting there in silence for most of each day. He sat at Loki's feet almost all the time, it was something he reasoned was inevitable, not letting it bother him so much anymore. 

He found himself hungry and kneeling at Loki's knee, just happy to have breakfast and move his tongue, not thinking at all about eating out of his hand. Not until later, alone. But, ultimately, he came to the conclusion that his feelings about any of this never changed a damned thing for the better. 

Being left alone on his chain left an inevitable crack in Tony's self-delusions of something related to normalcy. Then, too, he had his stolen moments to practice making constructs with the power of his arc reactor, whether or not he could call it magic he was getting the hang of it. 

One day bled into the next, the next. 

Eventually Loki put the muzzle away, but carefully continued treating Tony like an animal. Not even talking _at_ him anymore, aloofly allowing Tony to retreat into his own head as his hands kept itching to be put to use. 

Loki seemed to be putting a great deal more effort into his ruse as Odin, even when it was just the two of him. Tony could _see_ Loki, but it was someone else's imperial posture and tone of voice that kept coming out. 

It wasn't until much later that the real passage of time reared its head again. 

One morning, Tony woke up and sleepily scratched at his beard. At least, until he noticed Loki sitting up, staring at him with the kind of interest he hadn't had in his captive since the trip to Alfheim. 

"What?" Tony said, his voice rusty with disuse. Something in him woke up, as if he'd been sleepwalking for weeks. 

Loki didn't answer, but hopped lightly onto the floor, sweeping a robe around his shoulders as he strode out, leaving Tony to watch after from his rug in bemusement. 

He wasn't left to wonder long. Loki called for him after some sounds of rummaging. Wary, but more curious about this sudden change of attitude, Tony got up slowly when the chain detached itself and slid down into the furs. Prowling toward the sound coming from the bathroom, he paced like a fireball might jump out at him, but there was nothing but the presumptive King of Asgard and Defender of the Nine Realms standing at the sink, sleeves rolled up, and barber's tools laid out on a towel: a pair of gilded shears and a similarly ostentatious comb, a straight razor of sorts he'd seen often enough by then, what everyone used to shave off their beards. That and the dish of foam made Tony optimistic; he'd wanted a good shave since he could bother to be concerned about trivial comforts like that. 

"It's about time," Tony said dryly, his usual tone smoothing out his voice now. 

"Take off your tunic and stand still." It was a little depressing, how Tony was actually glad just to be paid any attention at all. 

So he did what he was told, and let himself submit to the most unlikely barber. 

Towel around the shoulders and all, Loki did it like he certainly had many times before, practiced at his bringing the comb to his beard, tidy little snips as he began to even out the coarse hair. 

It wasn't the shave he'd been hoping for, the razor disappointingly for cleaning up the edges, but the face in the mirror began to take in a halfway civilized shape. Beards weren't all bad. Even if it wouldn't have been his first choice. Or his second. Or his third. 

Loki was meticulous in his grooming, until he was brushing out a length that Tony was surprised to see he'd had the time to grow, he hadn't even been looking at himself, had he? Loki was, meanwhile, pursing his lips as he judged if he was satisfied. 

"If you ask me..." 

"I didn't," Loki cut off curtly, putting the comb down with a snap against the marble. 

Loki moved between him and the mirror to play with the well-groomed beard, tugging and shushing when a sharp one made Tony wince and huff. 

The person revealed in the mirror, with a flourishing snap back of the towel, hardly looked like someone that had ever come from Earth. Now that he was really looking at himself. 

Tony's tanned skin was evenly dark as it had ever been across his torso, down to his waist where a gold-trimmed tunic was hanging loose from his belt. He could see the edge of the marks across his back and wondered if it had grow in its mirroring of his arc reactor. His hair was curling just past his ears, his beard neatly bound into a tuft with a little gold ring. 

There was something in his eyes that was different, too. Tony stared back into himself, attempting to figure it out until Loki pushed him out of the way. 

"Go lay down, you're done," he said, snapping his fingers toward the bedroom. 

Tony frowned at him, but ultimately continued along the path of least resistance by slinking back and flopping down with a huff he made sure Loki would hear in the other room. 

He played with the new feature to his face by rolling the short tail between two fingers. He knew it should bother him more. It did, somewhat, but he had to figure that Loki picking how he groomed was better than the caveman chic he'd been developing. 

Not that it really mattered, nobody else would even see a human shape to his jaw, let alone how much hair was sprouting out of it. 

Tony sighed and rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. He did some more flight calculations for Starboost in the patterns of the marble until a servant arrived with breakfast. 

He ate out of Loki's fingers and tried to think of something, anything, he could possibly do about it. But he was hungry and this was the only was he was going to eat, something he began to identify as a drawback to having his human shape, the wolf got to eat by himself, usually, if he'd hunted it himself or not. Loki wasn't even looking at him, which should have helped, but didn't. 

The thought that Loki and Tony might both be getting bored of his captivity there made him want to laugh, but settle for a tight grin. Loki didn't seem to notice. He was reading, not looking down. 

Perhaps being the wolf again would make it easier. His thoughts were all he truly had, but being left alone with them was getting tiresome. Nothing he could remember about the last time Loki had changed him carried this relentless melancholy with it. 

Tony stayed on autopilot for the next hour or so, out to the throne room, idly observing the courtiers there that morning. 

He wasn't entirely sure when he began to sense tension in the air of the throne room; that woke him up again. Scanning the crowd more intently, he sat up by Loki's calf, feeling the man on the throne register his sudden alertness with a tensing of his leg, the grip on his staff shifting somewhat. 

When the sudden motion came from the crowd, Freki was gone. It was Tony Stark's training that took over, jumping over and down the steps, his leashed jerking out of Loki's loose grip. 

A blonde Asgardian he didn't recognize had rushed forward, the guards at either side of the dais: thrown daggers, he realized. The tall man was reaching into his unassuming robes again, but Tony was having none of it. 

As the attacker's eyes registered that Odin's pet was a genuine threat, Tony was reaching forward, energy surging up his arm, clasping it in a glowing skeleton of Iron Man's gauntlet to fire. Power rushed out of his chest, sucking his breath away as it flew out and struck home in the center of the man's chest, a beacon of blinding blue. 

Chaos erupted as the body was flung limp into the crowd. 

Panting, Tony realized what he'd just done. Eyes going wild, he turned on the throne, set to lunge at Loki, too, only to find Loki having anticipated the reaction, startlingly right behind him. He was already grabbing Tony's collar in one hand, dropping the spear to latch onto Tony's wrist before the magical gauntlet was pointed at him. 

"Perhaps I was careless in the work I gave you to occupy yourself, little wolf," he growled softly, just barely audible to Tony over the chaotic din pressing in around them. "Perhaps just right. _**Sleep ******_," he intoned.

The word was hypnotic, dragging him under even as he caught on to what Loki was saying, he'd known, he'd _allowed_ Tony to learn to control the power source he'd become. It had never been his secret bid for freedom at all. 

"Bastard," Tony barked, struggling just to keep his eyes open. 

"I think the time has come to resort to extreme measures," Loki murmured, sinking down in the midst of his crowding guards, stroking Tony's head once he stopped struggling. 

"Sleep," he repeated. "You'll feel better when you wake up. Good boy." 

Surrounded by frantic voices, Tony slipped away to the horrifying unknown of what that could mean. And just as he heard Fandral's cut through the rest, leaving him a last thought of just how much he hated that man. 

* * * 

Freki woke up slowly, groaning as he stretched and blinked his bleary eyes. Something was wrong, he realized, something was missing, or... he didn't know. Yes, that was it, not knowing was the problem! 

When he sat up, all his alarm seemed to be for nothing. His furs had been laid in front of the fire on what had to be a cool, as well as quiet, night for the hearth to be blazing. He was unhurt, his self all whole and familiar, despite the continued nagging in his head that it was all wrong. These were his hands, his clothes, his bed, the rooms he always slept in, and there was the sound of his master's voice, close by as it always was. 

Everything was just as he knew it should be. But his hands were shaking with anxiety, with the inexplicable knowledge that he was, somehow, completely _off._

The voices across the room stopped, and Freki turned to look. His master and Prince Thor, seated across from each other with tall tankards in their hands and somber faces. 

"Our hero rises," Thor announced, reaching out his hand. 

Freki didn't hesitate to take the offer, walking over to sit back down at his side, trying to get his bearings under the reassuring strokes of Thor's wide hand over his hair. 

"He's trembling as the fearsome beast never has," Thor remarked, with obvious concern. 

"I sense he was struck with some sorcery meant to disorient. Lucky it did not work swiftly," Master said. 

That was it then; nothing was wrong, he'd been made to think so. He remembered there had been an attacker, he'd rushed at him... but it was just so unclear. He had been protecting his master, he must have been, but he wasn't sure how, exactly, he'd gained the upper hand. He had jumped forward, he'd... he didn't know. Perhaps he'd bitten him. 

"Don't you worry Freki, you're a good boy. A very good boy, today," his master said. 

A warm flush of pleasure washed over his chest, overcoming all those clearly baseless concerns. Freki moved over to Master's feet, flopping against them in a demand for his reassuring touch, too. It felt like it had been too long since he'd felt those long fingers in his hair, gently scratching his scalp. 

Freki closed his eyes and rested his head against Master's knee. He felt just fine now. Everything was just the way it was supposed to be. Of course it was.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not long, but hopefully it's something good for now as I get back into writing this and that. If it's not good, well. I'd love to know!

When Freki awoke the next morning, everything felt more real under the light of the sun. His head felt, if not sorted out, at least clear. He was laying at the foot of Master's bed, right at the edge where his arm dangled on the floor and one leg was threatening to, but he felt comfortable. He knew this place, this room; every vein in the marble looked familiar enough that he could safely guess that he'd spent long hours here. Hours he didn't quite recall, but he knew he had.. His bed was, after all, there on the floor only a foot away from his hand. He moved his finger over the polished floor, cool and smooth. Of course he was comfortable here, he thought; this was home, wasn't it?

He looked up, propping himself to see over at his Master, confirming he was still asleep. Black hair strewn over his pillow, his chest rising and falling with slow, even timing. The bed was big enough that Freki's own was even closer than Master's feet somewhere under the blankets. 

Not waking up yet. Safe to slowly creep off the bed, lowering himself down to the floor, then to his feet. He pulled his tunic straight, then ran his fingers through his hair, then considered those instinctive motions as he padded across the floor. 

His head was in pieces. Clear and sharp, but now he was certain there was so very much missing. 

The past was missing. 

Freki padded onto the balcony and stopped under the arch of the door, the beauty of Asgard simply breathtaking. The elegant spires reaching into the bright sky full of jewel-toned nebulae and twinkling stars alongside the sun, silk banners fluttering in a fragrant breeze from blooming gardens nestled in the impossible city. 

_Impossible,_ everything. But there it was, as he knew it always had been. 

Freki knew then, with absolute certainty, he wasn't from anywhere like this place. He looked up and stopped marveling: he wanted to see something else. He wanted to know what he might even want to see besides all this. 

Sighing to himself, he climbed up on the railing and swung his feet over, sitting there over the city. In a place he knew he'd sat before, but not when. No specific time came to mind. Did he used to sit here and think on other mornings? He couldn't find an answer. 

The feeling he did want to do _something_ began to creep over him. 

He got up and just sort of let himself start moving, uncertainty at first, then smooth and sure. Stretching slowly, then he found himself in a kind of one-person dance across the stone balcony, but the kicks and sharp arm motions were practice for fighting. It all came back easily, his muscles remembered how to do it, followed by his brain remembering why. But not what it was called or where he learned it. 

The exercise continued until he was tired. Until he went to wash up and flop back down, this time on his fur bed. 

Searching his memory drifted in and out of dozing. 

Before long, his master stirred, yawned, stretched, then was walking past Freki, robe swishing on the floor. 

"To think there was a time, not so long ago, I had to keep you leashed," he said. 

Freki wasn't at his most fearsome, mostly on his back with his leg flung out and twisting his hips: from under his shoulder he huffed and rolled his eyes. He refused to be concerned about appearances in his own bed. Not this early. 

He dozed and watched Master dress through slitted eyes a while. 

When his master opened the door to let the servant in, Freki got up and sat off to the side. More routine, more familiar motions that kept telling him not to worry. And he tried, he did, but it was a stumbling block of a thought that kept cycling back to the top of his stack of thoughts. 

Freki knelt at his master's feet, but before he could be offered any, he put his hand on Master's knee. 

“Master,” he said slowly, taking his hand back a bit when those sharp eyes looked at him. “Master, I don't.. I don't remember who I am,” he admitted, then looked down at his fidgeting thumbs. “Everything before I woke up last night is gone. Everything is familiar, I know who everyone else is, but..” 

His master bent down and tilted his head back up with a finger under his chin, before he began tidying his beard a bit. 

"There is nothing here of your realm to remind you of that life," Master said. It made sense, it did, but it didn't promise much hope. 

Freki didn't relax, calm but white-knuckled around a fistful of fine linen and gold embroidery. 

"Listen to me," Master continued. "Your world can be one of great suffering, and you were not spared from that. You have been more content now since when you took shape to hunt with Thor." 

Freki had a feeling more than a memory sparked by that; a good, excited feeling. It must have been a blast. 

"I would still like to know, Master." 

Master just sighed and scratched into Freki's head pleasantly hard. 

"Did you do it? Stop me from remembering?" Freki blurted out. 

"It doesn't matter, little wolf. You're better off." 

"Can you tell me how I came here, at least?" 

There was a pause long enough to make him worry he'd tested his master's patience too much. But then there was a pat on the head, and he decided to push it a little more and look him square in the eyes. 

Master was still a little heavy-lidded from sleep, and if anything else, genuinely thoughtful about how to answer. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? 

"I found you in your realm, and saw you had talents wasted on your rabid culture. I hunted you until I could drug your water and capture you without bringing you any harm," Master said calmly. So calmly that Freki must have known that, no concern about his reaction at all, just more even petting. "You awoke here your first day, right there inside," he continued, pointing toward the bed chamber. 

Freki couldn't help but pull away and stand, bringing himself up to his modest height with a frown. 

"You weren't tamed yet," Master huffed. And of course not, of course he wasn't, but.. 

Master stood gracefully and wrapped his arms around Freki's stiff body, rubbing his back until he relented a little. It felt like a surprise, more affection than his short memory could recall and it didn't feel as familiar as anything had. 

"You were once unhappy here, before we came to have an understanding. But I want you to be happy. I will take you back there, after the treaty with Jotunheim is sealed. We have not even extended an invitation for an emissary yet, and still, it takes all my time." 

"Are... would you let me go, if I wanted to stay?" he asked, having to ask, even if it sounded absurd coming out of his mouth. Stay? In some rough land over this glorious one? A tiny part of him was vocal to say yes. 

"You won't want to stay," Master said matter-of-factly. 

That could well be true. But just talking about it made his chest tighten, swallowing down a lump in his throat. 

"After the treaty?" 

"I promise you, little wolf. If I haven't destroyed the realm I will bring you back to your old home. You have no family there, if that was a concern." 

Freki felt like he did, somehow. But he couldn't be sure of all these vague feelings. 

"Thank you, Master," he sighed, returning the hug. What more could he ask for than going home? 

Going home! The idea really sank in, made him hug his master even harder. He must have thought he would never see it again. Maybe after this political mess was sorted out he could keep going back, if he wanted to. 

Master patted his back and pulled him off, regally perching on his chair again, and Freki knelt with an appetite rearing its head all at once. Luckily, Master was more interested in feeding Freki than eating himself. 

Had there been a reason to feel this good lately? It didn't seem like it.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Proof that the plot is, in fact, leading somewhere.

Thus began an immediate interest in the political goings-on of the Aesir.

Freki was on edge, he found, as soon as he stepped out the door he was looking at everyone with suspicion. Guards, courtiers, servants, everyone might have had something to do with the attack in the throne room. And he was uniquely situated to be able to closely examine people without question, who would look deeply into what he did? But they did pay attention to him another way, praising him for defending their king. Even one the guards gave occasional nods of respect for half-remembered heroism. 

There were no spies revealing themselves and no assassins waiting in the corridors that morning, to his relief. If anything, they, too, were also on guard for anything suspicious. 

The council chambers were empty when they arrived, save Prince Thor brooding by one of the small balconies overlooking the beauty of Asgard. He stood rubbing his fingers down his beard slowly, before he turned to the King and smiled. 

“Father,” he greeted, stepping down a short set of stairs carved with hunting scenes along the risers. He'd taken pains to be presentable today, armor polished and a long silk tunic of black and gold emblazoned with the great tree belted over it. As princely as Freki could recall, for what little that meant. 

“You should not be so troubled. It was no surprise, that some would resist opening relations with Jotunheim. They have shown their intentions and failed,” Master assured him pragmatically. 

“It is not that. I am surely troubled by treason in our midst. But my thoughts are with Midgard.” 

“Ah.” Master's face became almost imperceptibly shuttered; Freki noticed, Thor didn't seem to. 

“One of their greatest warriors, who has fought at my side, has not been seen in many months,” he said, heaving a sigh of a long-held concern. “At first his comrades trusted he was on campaign, fighting a secret battle, but that hope wanes.” Thor’s smile became a drawn mask of concern, his thick arms crossed over his chest. 

Freki didn't need to observe the distant stoicism of the royals, he was the one to cross the distance and put himself at Thor’s side. As he knew he would, from his instinctual memory, Prince Thor immediately reached out to make contact, to rub the back of Freki’s neck with pleasant firmness. 

The touch was a comfort to him, as well. His gut felt tight, too invested in the fate of what must be a distant stranger, to a degree that wanted to contradict that it was a stranger they were talking about at all. 

Perhaps he'd heard stories of this warrior from a place called Midgard. 

“Midgard is quiet now, concerned in its own affairs. As we must be in ours. Trust a warrior as strong as you say will need no worries from afar,” Master said. “Or he has died well, to be remembered.” 

The king’s words were comfort enough, it seemed, Thor smiled again and nodded. 

“I have no doubt, Father.” 

Master gestured at the head of the great table, for them to take their places. Not Freki’s, of course. He was left to walk around the balconies as if there might be some assassin to ferret out, but all he flushed out was a pair of great birds fleeing before he could get too close. 

An image, perhaps more of a feeling, abruptly gripped him as he watched them flap away. Of flying, of seeing land coming up over a broad ocean as he soared towards it, wind rushing in his ears. 

It was so clear for those few seconds, the sensation of propelling himself in a high arc, touching the clouds before the earth came up quickly in mountains and expanses of sand. 

And then, the moment was gone. The birds glided off, banners fluttered in the breeze, and the idea he could fly was once again preposterous. Freki looked at his hand, one then the other, then huffed in a humorless laugh before laying down to observe where the sun was warming the stone pleasantly. 

There were no more daydreams to be had. As the council of advisors filed in, Freki’s attention stayed with them. 

The meeting spoke of familiar names and places, he must have been hearing all of this every day for some time. Jotunheim, ice giants, Princess Sigyn. Only the last one had an image attached, sad and lovely, and it did sound doubtful he'd ever been to this place that sounded so frigid and desolate. 

It seemed to him this idea of sending her to speak to the Jotun was a good one. One councillor spoke of her diplomacy, another of her ties to the traitor prince Loki of both realms. But he watched her name make Master's jaw tense ever so slightly with the repressed frustration of an argument he was tired of having. 

The subject changed when it was clearly going nowhere, but Freki couldn't let it go. 

When they all dispersed, grumbling softly about a lack of progress when they thought their king wasn't paying attention. Freki decided he had a stake in this, small as it was, and his own initiative to take. 

Master decided to take a walk through the lush gardens to clear his head, and although tempted to take the opportunity to stretch his legs, Freki stuck close to his side. 

Freki was silent, but kept fidgeting with his hands, making it irritatingly clear he had something on his mind until he couldn't be ignored. Master stopped and put his hands on his hips, looking down his nose at him. 

“Out with it.” 

“It seems to me,” Freki said slowly, his fidgeting now slowly running his steepled fingers against each other, “I think it sounds like you should send Princess Sigyn to-” 

“No,” Master snapped, interrupting him and briskly resuming his stroll. 

Freki frowned and moved to keep up, trying to judge just how impatient he was making Master. Too much. But he didn't shut up just yet. 

“Who else?” A question the council had not seemed to have a satisfactory answer for, besides, perhaps, Thor. But Prince Thor was no skilled diplomat, he was learning, but approached any kind of problem like a nail to hammer in. 

No response. 

“Why not her?” he tried. 

“It isn't safe, she is no warrior. The idea is to send someone alone, not a threat, but she would be entirely defenseless. Far too much to ask.” 

“Send me with her,” Freki blurted out, just as the words came into his head. Of course, he'd defended Master, hadn't he? “Send me with Sleipnir, I could hold them off while he brought her back.” 

Master looked at him incredulously, then laughed with unexpected delight that Freki didn't quite follow. 

Was it really so ridiculous, that he could do more than lay around Master’s feet all day? Sleipnir was strong and intelligent, he remembered that, the horse that was not quite a horse. And he had repelled the attacker that had so carefully planned his assassination two guards had not survived. Combat must have been part of his life, sometime, he already felt his adrenaline pumping at the thought of attack, of facing this fearsome bunch. 

Frost giants sounded more challenging than a single disgruntled Asgardian, but he still would have his element of surprise. 

Freki knew that people did not look at him and see what Master did. Nobody would ever speak to him or listen as Master did, not even Thor. It must have bothered him, once, it was a strange feeling he had to think about it, but he knew it could be valuable. 

Master continued through the gardens, but his steps seemed lighter. Perhaps he was just entertained by his pet being audacious. Perhaps he was thinking about it. But Freki swallowed down anything else he might have to say about it for the time being, with some difficulty. 

They walked their way back to the palace and through the mighty doors of the throne room, where courtiers were milling and guards stood placidly over them. 

Freki padded behind the king in soft boots over the gleaming marble and tried to picture the scene the day before, tried to remember what had quite happened. There had been more people here, he believed. When he perched beside the throne, he decided he'd been there in that same spot then as well, which was an easy assumption. 

An Aesir in a long blue robe stepped forward and bowed to his king, but Freki quickly lost interest in him when the subject was the need to repair a street through the market. 

Freki couldn't picture the market. Perhaps he'd never been there. It was that loss of certainty that took over his mind again, his past being a puzzle to recreate by deducing every piece. Master hasn't gone there, or never taken him. 

What a meaningless thing to be bothered by.


End file.
